THE  STORY  OF  THE  WEST  SERIES 

EDITED  BY  RIP  LEY  HITCHCOCK 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE 


The  Story  of  the  West  Series. 

EDITED  BY  RIPLEY  HITCHCOCK. 
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At  the  Mouth  of  a  Tunnel,  Sierra  Nevada  Mine. 


THE  -STORY 
OF    THE    MINE- 


AS  ILLUSTRATED  BY  THE 
GREAT  COMSTOCK  LODE  OF  NEVADA 


BY 

CHARLES  HOWARD  SHINN 

d 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW    YORK 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 
1903 


COPYRIGHT,  1896, 
Br  D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY. 


EDITOR'S  PEEFACE. 


IN  accordance  with  the  plan  of  the  Story  of  the 
West  Series  for  the  presentation  of  the  characteristic 
phases  and  types  offered  by  the  evolution  of  the  real 
West — the  great  country  lying  for  the  most  part  beyond 
the  Missouri — Mr.  Shinn,  out  of  a  singularly  complete 
personal  knowledge,  tells  in  this  volume  The  Story  of 
the  Mine.  Like  Mr.  Grinnell,  in  his  Story  of  the  In- 
dian, Mr.  Shinn  does  not  aim  at  a  comprehensive  his- 
tory, but  he  illuminates  its  salient  points.  There  are 
allusions  in  his  pages  which  afford  glimpses  into  this 
romantic  and  varied  history  from  the  Toltec  legends, 
the  Aztec  discoveries,  the  fierce  treasure  hunts  of  the 
Spaniards,  the  desultory  quests  of  later  Anglo-Saxons, 
the  epoch-making  event  at  Suttees  Mill,  the  develop- 
ment of  the  great  Comstock  lode,  and  the  feverish 
searching  from  the  Sierra  Madre  to  Alaska,  which  at 
one  time  and  another  has  brought  before  the  world 
the  gold  fields  of  Idaho  or  the  blanket  deposits  of 
Tombstone,  the  mineral  riches  of  Leadville  or  the 
wealth  of  Butte  and  Helena,  the  placers  of  California, 
,  or  the  ores  of -Cripple  Creek.  These  glimpses  show  us 


vi  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

the  figures  of  the  prospector  and  the  miner,  types  dif- 
ferent yet  still  closely  related  despite  the  vast  modern 
changes  in  conditions  and  methods.  By  dwelling 
particularly  upon  the  life  history  of  one  great  lode, 
Mr.  Shinn  has  succeeded  in  bringing  these  figures 
out  in  clear  relief,  and  also  in  presenting  some  of  the 
more  significant  aspects  of  the  evolution  of  the  mining 
industry.  It  is  not  easy  for  one  who  has  camped  with 
eager  prospectors,  who  has  followed  the  miner's  candle 
through  dark  galleries  and  has  seen  the  sharp  contrasts 
of  mining  life,  to  introduce  such  a  narrative  as  this 
without  emphasizing,  perhaps  unduly,  its  romantic  in- 
terest. That  interest  is  constant,  but  there  is  also  the 
interest  belonging  rightfully  to  a  great  industry  which 
energy  and  science  have  developed  to  a  high  point  of 
perfection.  Nowhere  else  on  this  continent  has  this 
development  been  better  illustrated  than  on  the  Corn- 
stock  lode.  Nowhere  else  could  the  author  have  found 
a  happier  means  of  exemplifying  the  entire  range  of 
mining  life. 

The  picture  of  this  life  drawn  by  Mr.  Shinn  is  of 
lasting  as  well  as  timely  interest.  He  has  not  written 
to  advocate  any  theory,  nor  to  deal  with  any  special 
issue.  He  has  simply  told  the  actual  story,  and  it  is  such 
writing  which  is  needed  for  a  better  understanding 
of  the  conditions  met  with,  and  the  splendid  energy 
and  resourcefulness  displayed  in  the  building  of  our 
West.  Within  the  last  few  years  expansion  westward 
has  been  checked  and  the  reaction  has  brought  prob- 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE.  yii 

lems  which,  may  seem  serious,  though  no  true  Ameri- 
can can  be  doubtful  as  to  the  ultimate  destiny  of  our 
country.  Many  of  the  typical  figures  of  Western  de- 
velopment have  passed,  and  their  preservation  as  his- 
torical types  is  the  object  of  this  series.  The  miner, 
though  transformed  in  many  ways,  is  a  figure  of  the 
present  as  well  as  the  past,  and  in  presenting  him  and 
his  work  in  this  volume,  Mr.  Shinn  has  not  only  con- 
tributed to  American  history  something  of  lasting 
value,  but  he  has  also  furnished  for  those  who  some- 
times read  between  the  lines  another  reason  for  pride 
in  the  qualities  which  have  conquered  this  continent 
and  an  aid  to  the  understanding  and  sympathy  which 
make  for  a  perfect  national  unity. 

KIPLEY  HITCHCOCK. 


AUTHOK'S  PKEFACE. 


IN  times  when  a  dedication  to  some  individual 
was  thought  as  necessary  a  part  of  a  completed  book 
as  the  title  page,  I  should  have  had  serious  trouble 
in  choosing  among  the  many  who  have  helped  me  in 
the  writing  of  this  book.  There  are  some  now  with  us 
no  more — genial  J.  Ross  Browne,  honest  Henry  De 
Groot,  thoughtful  Dr.  Gaily,  and  others — more  than 
I  have  space  to  name.  There  are  some  who  still  live 
in  this  busy  world,  and  who  once  helped  to  chronicle 
from  day  to  day  the  life  of  the  mining  camp — Dan 
De  Quille,  the  only  real  historian  of  the  Comstock; 
Judge  C.  C.  Goodwin,  of  Salt  Lake;  Arthur  McEwen; 
our  own  Mark  Twain;  and  Sam  Davis,  of  Carson. 
Many  other  builders  of  Nevada  have  helped  in  the 
preparation  of  this  volume,  from  Mayor  Sutro,  of  San 
Francisco,  to  scores  of  miners  and  prospectors.  Prof. 
S.  B.  Christy,  of  the  University  of  California,  has  kind- 
ly looked  over  the  more  technical  chapters.  Without 
venturing  upon  a  formal  inscription  to  any  one,  in 
these  days  when  dedications  appear  a  little  out  of 
place,  I  have,  nevertheless,  held  in  mind  all  the  toil- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

ing  frontiersmen  of  the  world  of  miners.  This  vol- 
ume, therefore,  is  in  essence,  though  not  in  name, 
dedicated  to  that  vast  body  of  men  whose  daily  life 
it  describes,  and,  not  least  among  them,  to  that  plain, 
lonely  workman,  the  American  Prospector. 

CHARLES  HOWARD  SHINK. 
NILES,  CALIFORNIA,  September,  1896. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER/  pAQK 

U£-MlNERS  AND  MINING  CAMPS 1 

II. — A  LAND  OP  PRECIOUS  METALS 8 

£HI. — MORMON  AND  PIONEER  GOLD 14 

IV. — THE  PLACER-MINING  PERIOD      .          .          .          .          .22 
V. — THE  FIRST  QUARTZ  PROSPECTORS      ....        26 

VI. — DISCOVERY  OP  THE  COMSTOCK 35 

VII.— PLACER  MINING  ON  QUARTZ  LEDGES       ...       .43 

VIII. — THE  RUSH  ACROSS  THE  SIERRAS     ....  48 

IX. — OLD  TIMES  IN  VIRGINIA  CITY 61 

X. — FINDING,  TESTING,  AND  WORKING  ORES  ...  75 

XI. — GREAT  MECHANICAL  PROBLEMS  SOLVED   ...  90 

XII. — DEPENDENT  INDUSTRIES 105 

XIII. — MINING  LITIGATION 123 

XIV. — STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS      .       .       .  136 

XV. — BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA 154 

XVI. — DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA       .       .       .       .173 

XVII.— THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL .194 

XVIII. — OUTSIDE  VIEW  OP  A  MINE 209 

XIX.— THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND 222 

XX.— THE  MINING  COMMUNITY  .       .       .       .       .       .239 

XXI.— THE  COMSTOCK  AS  IT  is  .       .       .       .       .       .259 

XXII.— THE  AMERICAN  MINER  OF  TO-DAY  .       .       .       .267 

xi 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTKATIOKS. 


FACING 
PAOB 

AT  THE  MOUTH  OP  A  TUNNEL, 

SIERRA  NEVADA  MINE    .       .    Frontispiece 

SUTTER'S  MILL ,       .       .       .16 

HYDRAULIC  MINING 89 

VIEW  OF  VIRGINIA  CITY .63 

INTERIOR  OF  A  MILL 80 

CHANGING  SHIFTS 94 

A  GROUP  OF  COMSTOCK  MINERS.       .....  110 

ON  THE  WAY  TO  THE  MINE 130 

SECTIONAL  VIEWS  OF  THE  BELCHER  MINE        .       .       .  150 

EUREKA  MINE 163 

DOWN  IN  A  GOLD  MINE 182 

ENTRANCE  TO  THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL,  SUTRO,  NEVADA        .  205 

THE  MOUTH  OF  A  SHAFT 217 

THE  BOTTOM  OF  A  SHAFT 234 

TREADWELL  GOLD  MINES,  DOUGLAS  ISLAND,  ALASKA       .  260 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

MINEKS  AND  MINING   CAMPS. 

THIS  book  is  not  a  technical  treatise  upon  the  min- 
ing industry.  It  is  only  an  attempt  to  describe  in  a 
clear  and  simple  way  some  of  the  every-day  features, 
as  well  as  some  of  the  unusual  things,  that  belong  to 
mines,  keeping  constantly  in  view  the  purely  human 
elements  of  the  story. 

Many  writers  go  into  the  mining  camps  of  the 
West  and  endeavour,  after  various  fashions  with 
varying  degrees  of  success,  to  fix  in  words  the  changing 
life  of  those  camps.  More  often  than  otherwise  the 
resulting  poem,  story,  or  sketch  rings  false;  it  is  over- 
wrought and  passionate;  it  lacks  the  simple  emo- 
tions; pistols  and  bandits  abound  in  a  nickel-novel 
atmosphere.  Things  that  are  on  the  surface  of  mining- 
camp  life  are  easy  to  see,  but  no  one  can  give  even  this 
a  reality  unless  he  understands  the  people  and  the  occu- 
pation by  that  which  is  more  than  study — the  sym- 
pathy and  affection  born  from  years  of  close  fellowship. 

I  remember  an  old  Nevadan  silver  freighter  who 
walked  all  day  long  for  many  successive  weeks,  months, 
and  years  beside  his  high  ore  wagon  across  the  Nevada 
desert.  He  was  one  of  brave  old  Dr.  Gally's  com- 

1 


2  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

pardons;  he  had  read  those  rough,  breezy,  genuinely 
frontier  articles  that  "  Single-line  "  used  to  publish  in 
mountain  newspapers;  he  knew  the  whole  Iliad  of  the 
Nevada  fighting  editors  by  heart.  I  remember  well 
how  slow,  simple,  and  methodical  was  this  old  Ameri- 
can silver  freighter,  patiently  plodding  back  and  forth 
over  a  land  of  desolation,  placidly  sorting  out  his  ideas 
until  they  were  as  sweet  and  real  as  winds  from  Sierra 
pine  forests. 

Said  he,  one  night  in  camp,  "  I  had  an  odd  notion 
lately.  I  thought  that  perhaps  one  of  these  days,  when 
all  the  frontiersmen  have  been  dead  a  hundred  thousand 
years,  the  stories  that  will  be  written  and  believed  about 
them  will  be  much  like  those  of  the  demigods/5  My  old 
freighter  could  have  shown  a  college  degree  if  he  had 
cared  to  (which  he  never  did),  and  he  knew  his  my- 
thology as  well  as  Leland  knows  his  gipsies. 

"  Some  fellow,  I  don't  know  who/'  the  silver 
freighter  continued,  "  has  got  to  stand  right  out  from 
the  ruck  some  of  these  days  to  represent  all  the  pioneer- 
ing that  has  been  done  by  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
us  for  generations  on  this  continent.  It  might  be  a 
fellow  with  buckskins  and  Kentucky  rifle,  or  another 
with  slouch  hat  and  mule  whip,  or  Doc.  Gally's  '  Big 
Jack  Small/  the  bull«puncher. 

"  As  I  was  saying,  it  might  turn  out  to  be  a  plain 
freighter.  But  the  freighter  is  simply  packing  around 
some  one  else's  ore.  The  miner  is  behind  him,  work- 
ing even  harder.  Out  yonder,  fifty  miles  in  the 
desert,  there's  a  man  and  his  wife  hammering  the 
drill,  blasting  rock,  opening  their  mine.  Been  there 
all  by  themselves  for  five  or  six  years.  Maybe  their 
mine  will  peter  out;  maybe  they'll  die  there,  and  some 
ore  freighter  will  put  them  under  the  sand. 

"  Yes,  and  behind  the  miner  there's  another  fellow 


MINERS  AND  MINING  CAMPS.  3 

of  the  same  sort,  only  more  primitive.  Sometimes  I 
think  he  stands  up  taller  than  all  of  us  put  together. 
He  is  looking  for  ore,  and  he  keeps  on  looking  till  he 
dies.  When  every  mine  has  heen  found,  named,  and 
worked,  when  the  whole  land  is  settled  and  has  been 
fenced  off  into  acre-lots  and  forties  for  ten  thousand 
years,  what  kind  of  stories  do  you  suppose  men  will 
be  telling  their  children  about  the  Nineteenth-Century 
Prospector?  " 

My  old  silver  freighter  leaned  silent  on  his  whip- 
stock.  Lonely,  toiling  men  and  women  of  countless 
mining  camps,  not  only  in  America  but  all  over  the 
world  and  ever  since  the  bronze  age  began,  seemed 
to  become  but  voices  that  mingled  in  one  great  chorus 
as  the  separate  parts  of  the  ship  in  Kipling's  story 
found,  by  losing  themselves,  the  Voice  of  the  Whole. 
We  stood  side  by  side,  and  both  of  us  were  thinking  of 
the  myth  spirit  which  works  continually  among  men, 
but  only  at  long  intervals  reaches  full  achievement. 
The  goddess  of  myths  has  not  chosen  among  the  found- 
ers of  the  American  colonies,  splendid  though  their  vic- 
tories were;  nor  has  she  taken  the  buckskin-clad 
Boones  and  Crocketts,  for  even  these,  though  unique, 
lack  something  of  the  universal.  It  will  not  be  trapper, 
or  hunter,  or  mountain  guide,  or  Eemington's  virile 
horsemen,  noble  and  eloquent  types  though  all  these 
certainly  are. 

But  what  is  more  likely,  when  one  considers  the 
settlement  of  the  far  West,  than  that  a  myth  of  the 
miner  shall  grow,  unseen,  and  find  ultimate  expression 
in  art,  song,  and  literature?  The  hills  will  some  day 
be  empty  of  gold.  The  waters  will  reclaim  the  deserts. 
New  and  strange  conditions  of  life  will  prevail  over  all 
the  lands  between  Atlantic  and  Pacific.  But  the  great 
myth  story  of  the  West  will  have  to  do  with  some  Titan 


4:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

of  Sierras  or  Rockies,  leaning  upon  his  mighty  pick,  as 
Thor  upon  his  Mjolnir.  Strong  and  lonely  as  a  grizzly, 
the  prospector  will  "  stand  right  out/'  in  the  words  of 
the  silver  freighter,  "  to  represent  all  the  pioneers." 

Far  enough  are  we  from  any  immediate  apotheosis 
of  the  much-enduring  miner,  who  is  the  last  of  men  to 
magnify  his  calling.  If,  now,  we  endeavour  to  select 
some  group  of  mines,  or  some  mining  period  of  especial 
importance,  which  shall  fitly  illustrate  the  more  bril- 
liant achievements  of  miners,  we  shall  have  many  claim- 
ants to  consider.  One  might  even  find  great  and  char- 
acteristic groups  of  classic  mines  in  Mexico  and  South 
America,  such  as  the  Sierra  Madre  with  its  authenti- 
cated yield  of  more  than  $800,000,000,  or  the  still  more 
famous  Potosi,  which  in  three  and  a  half  centuries 
poured  forth  about  $1,400,000,000  in  gold  and  silver. 
The  Spanish  American  is  a  little-understood  fellow- 
creature,  with  an  especially  "  good  nose  for  silver,"  as 
the  saying  goes.  Some  one  will  come  along,  sooner 
or  later,  who  has  carried  ore  in  rawhide  bags  up  the  slip- 
pery, notched  posts  that  the  Mexicans  call  ladders,  who 
has  summered  and  wintered  with  Jose  and  Juan,  and 
who  knows  their  pet  superstitions,  their  hereditary  and 
acquired  mine  lore.  Then  we  shall  have  the  quaint 
and  pretty  story  of  the  Mexican  mine,  but  the  story 
herein  told  must  keep  to  more  familiar  ground. 

In  the  United  States  there  has  never  been  a  more 
dramatic  episode  than  the  Californian  gold  rush  of 
1848-'50 — an  episode  that  is  in  its  way  unique,  the 
very  epitome  of  the  whole  history  of  placer  mining. 
After  California  were  the  gold  placers  of  Colorado, 
Idaho,  and  Montana — the  days  of  Pike's  Peak,  Salmon 
River,  and  golden  Helena.  As  trained  prospectors 
continued  to  explore  the  Sierras,  the  Rockies,  and  other 
mountains  of  North  America,  these  were  followed  in 


MINERS  AND  MINING  CAMPS.  5 

swift  succession  by  many  equally  important  mineral 
discoveries.  Then  came  the  news  of  the  famous  fis- 
sure veins  of  "  King  Solomon  Mountain,"  Ouray,  and 
the  whole  wild  San  Juan  region,  first  entered  by  that 
brave  old  prospector,  John  Baker,  in  1860,  but  opened 
to  the  miners  in  1873.  Next,  still-thriving  Leadville 
won  renown,  with  its  "  six  log  cabins  "  of  August,  1877, 
and  its  "thirty-four  huge  smelters"  of  December, 
1879.  Work  had  hardly  begun  on  the  Leadville  carbon- 
ates before  Eichard  Gird  and  the  Scheiffelin  Broth- 
ers were  astonishing  the  mining  world  with  the  rich 
chlorides,  carbonates,  and  horn-silver  of  Tombstone. 

The  glories  of  many  of  these  earlier  camps  have 
somewhat  paled  in  recent  years  before  the  sudden  and 
splendid  records  of  new  groups  of  mines,  such  as 
Cripple  Creek  and  other  frontier,  camps.  Within  the 
past  five  years  more  than  a  hundred  promising  new 
camps,  some  of  them  extremely  profitable  from  "  grass 
roots  down,"  have  been  established  all  the  way  from 
the  Mexican  borders  to  the  Yukon  and  its  tributaries. 

Nor  has  it  been  in  the  United  States  alone  that 
mining  for  the  precious  metals  has  greatly  increased 
in  importance.  The  world's  average  yearly  yield  of 
gold  alone  during  the  first  half  of  the  century  was  only 
about  $16,000,000,  but  the  statisticians  tell  us  that  in 
1895  about  $205,000,000  in  gold  was  taken  from  the 
mines.  The  details  of  this  extraordinary  increase  in 
the  world's  mine-yield  belong  to  the  history  of  colonies, 
states,  and  nations.  A  few  of  the  more  striking  re- 
sults can  be  given  here.  Eussia,  owing  to  Siberian  dis- 
coveries, turned  out  $34,000,000  in  gold  last  year,  the 
highest  amount  in  her  records.  Australasia  has  in- 
creased its  output  from  $25,000,000  in  1887  to  $44,- 
000,000  in  1895.  The  total  yield  of  Africa  was  about 
the  same  lasi;  year  as  that  of  Australasia.  New  mines 


6  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

are  rapidly  making  records  all  the  way  from  Patagonia 
to  British  Columbia.  Even  now  syndicates  are  en- 
deavouring to  obtain  entry  into  the  mineral  districts 
of  China,  hoping  to  find  another  California. 

While  this  book  was  being  written,  mining  interests 
the  world  over  were  each  day  more  potent  factors  in 
the  social,  industrial,  and  political  life  of  the  nations. 
$"ew  captains  of  industry  have  come  to  the  front  in 
lands  which  five  years  ago  were  strange  names  in  the 
ears  of  men.  Frontier  battles  have  been  fought,  the 
world's  peace  has  been  seriously  threatened,  the  whole 
complex  machinery  of  modern  diplomacy  has  been 
set  in  motion  to  avert  disaster,  and  through  it  all  one 
hears  the  vibratory  ring  of  the  miner's  drill,  uncover- 
ing hidden  ledges  in  Africa,  Asia,  South  America,  and 
rousing  the  fierce  gold  hunger  of  mankind.  Plot  and 
counterplot  shake  the  secret  places  of  the  earth  to- 
day, and,  for  a  time  at  least,  the  central  figure  of  it 
all  is  the  prospector,  going  forth  to  strike  again  the 
keynote  of  Spain,  of  California,  of  Australia,  of  South 
Africa;  to  find  and  conquer  a  desert,  waste  and  terrible; 
to  build  cities,  and  carry  farmers  to  unpeopled  valleys; 
to  give  to  the  new  land  railroads,  fleets  of  ships,  mounted 
police,  armies,  legislatures — and  then  to  fling  it  down, 
one  more  colony  or  commonwealth,  whose  corner  stone 
is  based  on  quartz,  and  to  go  on  into  some  untrodden 
wilderness. 

What. a  strange  and  brilliant  procession  of  bankers, 
lawyers,  speculators,  politicians,  statesmen,  cabinet 
ministers,  lords  and  ladies  of  high  degree,  princes  of 
blood  royal,  presidents  and  monarchs  are,  even  now, 
pressing  with  reckless  haste  on  the  trail  of  the  flannel- 
shirted  prospector!  No  great  artist  has  ever  painted  a 
picture  of  this  wild  procession,  storming  so  fiercely 
into  newly  discovered  groups  of  mining  camps.  Each 


MINERS  AND  MINING  CAMPS.  7 

generation  would  have  different  figures  made  promi- 
nent, but  there  would  always  be  the  camp  followers, 
the  outriders,  the  dead  and  dying,  the  utmost  follies, 
the  darkest  crimes,  the  noblest  self-sacrifices.  Limit- 
less avarice,  Timon-like  hate,  courage  great  as  that  of 
the  gods  themselves,  are  in  the  unending  march.  Some 
few  loom  up  along  its  changing  lines,  the  briefly  wo?,- 
shipped,  the  swiftly  forgotten,  of  each  fierce  gold 
rush.  Once  it  was  some  nameless  Phoenician  specu- 
lator, some  Eoman  who  farmed  out  half  the  mines 
of  Spain,  some  successful  free-lance  adventurer  from 
India  or  Brazil.  History  has  kept  scant  record  of  the 
thousands  of  Rhodeses  and  Barnatos,  of  I.  D.  B.  rob- 
beries, of  outlanders  and  of  chartered  companies,  the 
men  who  rose  and  fell,  singly  or  in  groups,  ceaseless 
and  changing  as  the  waves  of  ocean,  age  after  age,  while 
the  miner  moved  on  from  camp  to  camp  with  this  mul- 
titudinous army  roaring  sealike  in  his  wake. 


CHAPTER  II. 

A    LAND    OF    PBECIOUS    METALS. 

As  it  happens,  there  is  one  place  in  America  where 
mining  for  the  precious  metals  has  been  carried  on 
upon  so  grand  a  scale  and  under  such  stupendous  dif- 
ficulties that  the  results  of  the  struggle  with  Nature's 
forces  have  greatly  affected  the  mining  interests  of  the 
world.  Whether  we  consider  the  Comstock  vein  of 
Nevada  from  the  standpoint  of  its  mineral  yield,  or 
study  the  dramatic  elements  in  its  strange  history,  the 
group  of  mines  along  its  course  is  typical,  in  the  most 
complete  sense,  of  the  dangers  and  vicissitudes  of  min- 
ing life.  The  term  "  Comstocker  "  is  known  in  every 
country  and  in  every  language;  the  Comstock  miner  is 
everywhere  recognised  as  a  post-graduate  among  miners 
of  other  camps.  World-famous  mining  engineers  have 
taxed  their  utmost  skill  in  the  service  of  the  Comstock; 
the  greatest  geologists  have  given  laborious  days  to 
the  study  of  its  marvels;  travellers  have  gazed  upon 
its  mighty  engines  and  threaded  its  vast  underground 
cities;  metropolises  have  been  stirred  to  their  pro- 
f oundest  depths  by  mining  news  from  Comstock  bonan- 
zas. The  reports  of  the  United  States  Geological  Sur- 
vey sum  up  many  laborious  volumes  about  the  Com- 
stock by  such  statements  as  these:  "  Contributions  of 
the  first  importance  to  mining  science  have  been  fur- 
nished." "  Through  contentions  of  its  rival  locators, 
our  national  mining  legislation  was  mainly  shaped." 

8 


A  LAND  OF  PRECIOUS  METALS.       9 

"  No  subsequent  discoveries  can  rival  the  influence  of 
the  lode." 

Nevada,  the  country  of  the  Comstock,  is  a  part  of 
the  wonderful  plateau  known  as  the  "  Great  Basin," 
lying  between  the  Eockies  and  the  Sierra  Nevadas.  I 
am  indebted  to  Mr.  S.  T.  Gage,  of  California,  for 
knowledge  of  a  remarkable  prophecy  made  by  Horace 
Greeley  respecting  this  then-neglected  region,  in  a 
speech  delivered  on  the  plaza  of  Placerville  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1859. 

Toward  the  close  of  his  address  came  these  sen- 
tences: "  Lastly,  I  have  come  across  a  desolate  and  ter- 
rible country,  a  land  seemingly  worthless  forever — the 
Great  American  Desert.  But  I  believe  that  the  Al- 
mighty has  created  nothing  in  vain,  and  as  I  have 
passed  over  this  awful  region,  the  thought  has  fixed 
itself  in  my  mind  that,  since  it  is  certainly  useless  for 
every  other  purpose,  it  may  be  a  land  of  vast  mineral 
wealth.  If  that  be  so,  it  will  take  a  hundred  thousand 
Californian  miners  a  hundred  thousand  years  even  to 
prospect  it." 

The  rugged  plateau  to  which  Greeley  alluded  is 
from  two  to  five  thousand  feet  above  the  sea,  and 
is  between  five  and  six  hundred  miles  wide,  becom- 
ing more  narrow  and  sinking  toward  the  north  and 
south.  Nevada,  a  large  part  of  Utah,  and  parts  of  Ore- 
gon and  California  are  included  within  its  limits.  The 
Great  Basin,  whose  rims  are  the  Sierra  Nevada,  the 
"Wahsatch,  and  the  Blue  Mountains  of  Oregon,  is 
crossed  by  mountains  that  divide  it  into  a  group  of 
lesser  basins,  such  as  the  Humboldt,  the  Washoe,  the 
Carson,  and  the  Walker.  Even  the  valleys  of  the 
higher  portion  of  the  plateau  are  five  and  six  thousand 
feet  above  the  sea,  while  the  greater  mountain  peaks 
rise  five  thousand  feet  more. 


10  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

There  are  extensive  deserts  in  the  Great  Basin,  ex- 
amples of  which  are  the  famous  Death  Valley,  the. 
Black  Bock  Desert,  the  Sage  Desert,  the  Desert  of  the 
Colorado  sloping  south  and  west,  the  Forty-Mile  Desert 
of  the  Humboldt  region,  and  the  Bitter  Water  district 
of  the  Armagosa.  Everywhere  are  alkali  plains  spotted 
with  scanty  bunch  grass  and  miles  of  basaltic  rock, 
where  a  few  stunted  junipers  and  thorny  cacti  grow. 
Horned  toads^  lizards,  scorpions,  tarantulas,  brush  rab- 
bits, sage  hens,  and  innumerable  crickets  were  about 
all  the  living  creatures  that  the  pioneers  found  as  they 
toiled  painfully  across  the  deserts  on  their  way  to  Ore- 
gon and  California. 

During  ancient  geologic  periods,  when  the  Eockies 
and  the  Sierras  were  being  slowly  uplifted  from  the 
ocean,  an  immense  area  of  deep  seas  holding  minerals  in 
solution  were  for  a  time  inclosed  in  the  Great  Basin,  and 
beds  of  salt,  sulphur,  mica,  borax,  soda,  arsenic,  man- 
ganese, and  other  minerals  deposited  in  water,  remain 
as  relics  of  that  inland  ocean.  If  the  basin  thus  formed 
had  contained  no  other  mountains,  the  great  desert 
would  have  been  nearly  or  quite  impassable  for  many 
years,  and  the  development  and  history  of  the  United 
States  would  have  been  seriously  modified  by  a  Sahara 
between  the  Mississippi  Valley  and  the  Pacific  coast. 

The  problem  of  the  method  of  ore  distribution  has 
interested  leading  geologists.  According  to  Baron 
Richtofen,  immense  floods  of  fluid  matter  from  under- 
crushed  and  folded  strata  of  rock  were  slowly  forced 
out  through  fissures  during  the  gigantic  processes  of 
mountain  creation.  What  Prof.  Joseph  Le  Conte  calls 
the  "  submountain  reservoir  "  of  fused  matter  thus  sup- 
plied the  sheets  of  lava  many  feet  thick  that  occur  in 
the  Great  Basin.  The  contents  of  the  metalliferous 
veins  were  deposited  by  hot  alkaline  waters  that  came 


A  LAND  OF  PRECIOUS  METALS.      H 

up  through  fissures  with  various  minerals  in  solution. 
There  are  many  different  classes  of  mineral-bearing 
veins  of  rock,  but  the  desire  of  the  quartz  miner  is  to 
find  a  "  true  fissure  vein."  By  this  he  means  one  of  the 
great  breaks  or  fissures  caused  by  a  movement  of  the 
earth's  crust  and  filled  with  ores — that  is,  with  slowly 
deposited  mineral  substances.  Such  fissure  veins  are 
often  very  wide,  of  an  immense  depth,  and  occur  in 
parallel  groups. 

The  mountain  system,  more  closely  examined,  grid- 
irons the  country  with  a  hundred  ranges  from  fifty  to 
a  hundred  miles  long.  They  rise  three  or  four  thou- 
sand feet  above  the  plateau,  the  passes  through  them 
are  often  high  and  difficult,  and  many  an  isolated  val- 
ley, remote  from  civilization,  lies  between  their  peaks. 
History  is  written  in  the  strange  names  of  these  moun- 
tain chains.  Some  carry  the  trade-mark  of  the  Ameri- 
can trapper  or  prospector,  as  Carson,  Buckskin,  Muddy, 
and  Pancake;  others  are  Spanish,  as  Cortez,  Pinon, 
and  Vegas;  but  by  far  the  greatest  number  are  Indian, 
as  Washoe,  Toano,  Shoshone,  Toiyabe,  Toquina,  Wah- 
satch,  and  Pahranagat.  Between  the  dark,  treeless,  and 
forbidding  mountain  ranges  are  narrow  plains  or  val- 
leys, some  only  a  mile  wide.  The  melting  snows  keep 
the  grass  green  in  the  ravines  and  supply  occasional 
springs  and  rivulets  along  the  bases  of  the  mountains, 
which  unite  in  a  few  small  rivers,  every  one  of  which,  ex- 
cepting the  Eio  Virgin  and  the  Owyhee,  soon  disappears 
in  the  ground  or  in  some  lake  or  depression  called  a 
sink. 

The  earliest  maps  of  the  Great  Basin  and  the  tradi- 
tions of  Spanish  explorers  are  only  important  as  they 
serve  to  show  the  source  of  later  misconceptions  on  the 
part  of  traders  and  colonists.  The  John  Harris  map  of 
1605  "  seems  to  give,"  says  Bancroft,  "  the  name  Qui- 


12  THE  STORY  OF  THE   MINE. 

vira  to  a  vast  region  which  embraces  Nevada  in  com- 
mon with  other  undefined  countries/'  In  this  map 
California  is  the  island  of  Nova  Albion.  On  the  main- 
land, larger  than  Lake  Superior,  was  the  Lake  of 
Thongo,  from  which  two  great  rivers  flowed  to  the 
Pacific.  Most  of  its  errors  were  perpetuated  in  Finley's 
map  of  1826.  According  to  such  maps,  the  journey 
from  the  western  base  of  the  Eockies  was  through  a 
comparatively  level  and  well-watered  country.  The 
wandering  trappers  knew  better  than  this,  and  map- 
makers  would  have  done  well  to  consult  rough  old  Jim 
Bridger,  Captain  Ashley,  or  such  leaders  of  the  Hud- 
son Bay  Company  as  Peter  Ogden,  who  was  trapping 
on  the  Owyhee  and  the  Humboldt  long  before  Finley 
published  his  famous  map. 

But  the  trappers  left  little  or  no  record  of  their 
wanderings,  although  they  crossed  the  Sierras  to  the 
Spanish  settlements,  and  named  many  a  mountain  peak 
and  alpine  pass  in  the  years  between  1825  and  1840. 
Walker,  the  guide,  heroic  William  Sublette,  Kit  Car- 
son, Captain  Wyatt,  Jedediah  S.  Smith,  and  nameless 
free  trappers  were  adventurers  in  the  Great  Basin,  and 
some  of  them  soon  carried  back  stories  of  placer  gold, 
or  even  showed  flakes  of  the  precious  metal  when  they 
wintered  at  the  noisy  frontier  posts  of  the  Eockies. 
For  the  most  part,  however,  their  tales  were  of  suffer- 
ing and  disaster,  of  thirst  and  hunger  in  the  deserts, 
and  of  hair-breadth  escapes  from  hostile  beasts  and 
men. 

After  Fremont's  explorations  in  1844  and  1<845  the 
main  lines  of  travel  were  fairly  well  mapped  out,  and 
immigration  went  on  with  hardly  a  pause.  The  nomads 
of  the  Great  Basin  saw  their  hunting  grounds  invaded 
by  longer  lines  of  wagons  and  larger  camps  of  white 
men.  By  1847  the  trails  of  the  trappers  had  become 


A  LAND  OF  PRECIOUS  METALS.  13 

such  pathways  that  no  guide  was  needed.  Books,  maps, 
and  newspaper  articles  began  to  be  published,  giving 
directions  to  emigrants;  signboards  were  put  up  at 
some  of  the  points  where  roads  divided.  Rivers  of 
changing  life  were  flowing  out  of  the  Mississippi  Valley 
toward  the  Columbia  and  the  Golden  Gate. 

The  fateful  year  1848  brought  the  discovery  of  gold 
in  Marshall's  mill-sluice,  and  in  an  hour  after  the  news 
went  abroad  the  number  of  overland  emigrants  began 
to  multiply.  The  beaten  track  became  a  broad  high- 
way, strewn  with  wrecks  of  wagons  and  bones  of  horses 
and  cattle.  Whole  families  took  the  long  and  toilsome 
journey  through  Salt  Lake  Valley,  where  the  Mormon 
faith  was  established,  and  across  deserts  and  mountains, 
day  after  day,  week  after  week,  until  the  crest  of  the 
Sierras  was  reached  and  every  river  flowed  to  the  Pa- 
cific. One  and  all  were  gold  seekers  going  to  the 
California  placers  to  make  their  fortunes.  Their 
thoughts  and  talk  were  often  of  mining  and  miners. 
Yet  these  thousands  of  immigrants  made  camp  after 
camp  in  what  is  now  Nevada  without  dreaming  that 
precious  metals  were  hidden  within  easy  reach! 


CHAPTER  III. 

MORMON   AND   PIONEER   GOLD. 

WHILE  eager  miners  were  exploring  the  ridges  and 
canons  of  the  western  Sierras,  the  Latter-Day  Saints/ 
or  Mormons,  recognising  the  profound  significance  of 
the  conquest  of  California  and  the  discovery  of  placer 
gold,  were  making  a  gigantic  effort  to  claim  and  con- 
quer that  great  inland  empire  which  they  named  the 
State  of  Deseret.  The  miner,  whom  they  had  learned 
to  fear,  had  crossed  this  vast  and  undeveloped  region, 
had  pitched  his  tents  where  Mormon  leaders  were 
dreaming  of  a  future  seacoast  possession.  There  was 
to  be  a  struggle  for  that  which  remained.  The  famous 
State  of  Deseret,  organized  March  18,  1849,  contained 
Utah,  Nevada,  Arizona,  parts  of  Wyoming,  Oregon,  and 
Colorado,  and  nearly  half  of  California,  including  San 
Diego  Bay.  Hundreds  of  the  most  prosperous  mining 
camps  of  America  lie  within  this  huge  circle. 

The  Mormon  Church,  after  claiming  this  enormous 
domain,  began  to  strengthen  its  outside  colonies  and 
established  many  others,  to  acquire  political  influence 
in  new  communities.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  if  the  war 
with  Mexico  had  been  delayed  a  few  years  longer  there 
might  have  been  another  independent  State  besides 
Texas,  carved  from  Mexican  territory,  and  treating 
with  the  United  States  of  America  as  with  a  foreign 
power. 

14 


MORMON  AND  PIONEER  GOLD.  15 

Immediately  after  organizing  their  new  State  the 
Mormons  sent  an  expedition  of  eighty  men  into  the 
western  country,  some  of  whom  built  a  log  cabin  at 
"  Mormon  Station,"  in  Carson  Valley.  After  complet- 
ing the  "  first  American  house  in  Nevada  "  they  crossed 
over  the  Sierras  and  bought  their  suplies,  also  provi- 
sions to  sell  to  the  immigrants.  Keturning,  they  sold  out 
the  cargo  and  made  a  second  trip  to  California  before 
winter.  None  of  these  men  were  miners,  but  Beatie, 
the  founder  of  this  first  trading  station,  says  in  his 
manuscript  narrative,  in  the  Bancroft  Library,  that  in 
J.849,  while  he  was  in  California  buying  supplies,  one  of 
the  men  left  at  the  station  washed  out  a  little  gold  in  the 
gulches  near  Carson  Valley.  On  his  second  trip  the 
news  was  told  to  some  Mormon  miners,  and  in  the 
spring  of  1850  men  crossed  the  Sierras  to  prospect  for 
placers. 

But  the  real  beginning  of  placer  mining  was  early 
in  1850,  when  a  Mormon  emigrant  train  on  the  way  to 
California  camped  in  Carson  Valley  to  recruit  their 
animals,  and  several  of  the  party  made  a  prospecting 
tour  along  the  river  and  its  tributaries.  Near  the  site 
of  the  present  town  of  Dayton,  at  the  mouth  of  Gold 
Canon,  they  found  gold,  though  not  in  large  quanti- 
ties. The  details  of  this  discovery  are  interesting.  On 
May  15th  William  Prouse  "  took  a  tin  milk  pan,  went 
down  to  the  creek,  and  washed  out  a  little  of  the  sur- 
face dirt."  If  there  had  been  any  prospectors  in  the 
party  the  riches  of  Gold  Canon  would  have  been  dis- 
covered in  a  short  time  from  this  clew,  but  the  Mor- 
mons only  saw  the  ashen-hued,  barren  land  which  they 
were  anxious  to  leave;  they  went  on,  but  found  the 
great  Snowy  Range,  as  they  called  the  Sierras,  still  im- 
passable, afad  so  they  turned  back  to  their  former  camp. 
John  Orr  and  Nicholas  Kelly  now  named  the  ravine 


16        THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Gold  Canon,  and  they  spent  three  weeks  looking  for 
the  precious  metal.  On  June  1st,  Orr  "  thrust  a  butcher 
knife  into  a  crevice  at  the  edge  of  a  small  cascade  "  and 
pried  out  a  nugget  worth  perhaps  ten  dollars.  A  few 
days  later  the  whole  company  packed  up  and  crossed 
the  Sierras. 

Whether  Prouse  and  Orr  told  others  or  not,  the 
news  of  the  discovery  somehow  crept  abroad.  In 
August  some  immigrants  camping  in  the  valley  saw  a 
train  of  Mexicans  with  mules  and  wooden  bowls,  pro- 
visions and  miners'  tools,  crossing  the  hills  to  Gold 
Canon.  Two  American  boys  among  the  immigrants 
followed  the  Mexicans  and  found  that  Don  Ignacio 
Paredes  was  the  chief,  and  that  the  party  was  originally 
from  Sonora,  Mexico,  but  had  recently  come  from  Cali- 
fornia. Provisions  were  so  costly,  however  (flour  being 
$1.50  a  pound),  that  several  small  groups  of  miners 
who  tried  to  work  the  Gold  Canon  placers  abandoned 
the  region  in  1850.  Nevertheless,  this  discovery  led 
in  time  to  the  discovery  of  the  Comstock  lode,  for  Gold 
Canon  heads  far  up  the  side  of  Mount  Davidson,  and 
the  metal  it  contained  came  from  the  wash  and  over- 
flow of  the  great  fissure  vein. 

Congress  had  meantime  refused  to  accept  the  de- 
sired Deseret  boundaries,  but  Utah  Territory,  as  organ- 
ized September  9,  1850,  extended  from  the  Eockies  to 
California,  including  the  whole  of  what  is  now  Nevada. 
The  latter  region  soon  became  known  as  Western  Utah, 
and,  separated  as  it  was  from  the  Salt  Lake  Valley  by 
mountains  and  deserts,  it  presented  serious  problems 
to  the  Mormon  leaders.  Many  of  the  settlers  they  sent 
out  crossed  into  the  California  placers,  or  became  slack 
in  their  allegiance  to  the  Church.  Every  effort  was 
made  to  establish  permanent  settlements  and  gather 
farmers  about  the  rude  trading  posts,  but  the  load- 


Sutler's  Mill. 
From  a  Print  of  the  Time. 


MORMON  AND   PIONEER  GOLD.  17 

stone  of  the  mines  was  too  strong,  and  by  the  autumn 
of  1850  all  the  Mormons  who  were  not  swinging  rockers 
in  Gold  Canon  moved  on  to  California,  while  Indians 
burned  the  deserted  cabins. 

Another  attempt  to  hold  the  country  was  made  in 
the  spring  of  1851.  Colonel  John  Eeese,  leading  a 
well-equipped  party  of  colonists  into  the  upper  Carson 
Valley,  re-established  a  trading  post  on  the  site  of  the 
first  Mormon  station.  They  bought  a  piece  of  land 
from  Captain  Jim,  the  Washoe  chief,  for  two  sacks  of 
flour,  and  made  a  fifteen-foot  stockade  of  cottonwood 
logs,  inclosing  an  acre.  Inside  of  this  they  constructed 
a  log  house  as  a  fort,  trading  post,  and  dwelling,  the 
only  permanent  dwelling  in  Western  Utah.  One  would 
think  that  now,  at  last,  the  Mormons  had  a  good  foot- 
hold. 

Nevertheless,  the  newcomers  soon  felt  the  spirit  of 
speculation.  First  one,  then  another  strayed  up  Gold 
Canon,  and  in  a  few  months  most  of  them  were  in  the 
camps.  One  of  these  was  a  feather-brained,  bibulous 
teamster,  whom  Eeese  had  picked  up  in  Salt  Lake — 
James  Finney,  or  Fennimore,  afterward  widely  known 
as  "  Old  Virginia,"  and  one  of  the  discoverers  of  the 
Comstock  lode.  Captain  Eeese's  expedition,  from 
which  so  much  had  been  expected  by  the  Mormons, 
had  done  little  except  to  bring  still  more  miners  into 
the  country. 

The  scattered  placer  camps  of  "Western  Utah  at  this 
period  were  very  simple  in  organization.  None  of  the 
miners  acknowledged  any  Mormon  officers.  Their  rude 
and  brief  laws  respecting  claims  were  similar  to  those 
of  the  California  placers.  Eockers  and  long  toms  were 
used.  In  the  autumn  and  spring  there  were  sometimes 
two  hundred  men  in  Gold  Canon,  but  by  June  of  each 
year  water  was  scarce  and  the  place  was  nearly  deserted. 


18        THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Then  the  miners  went  down  to  Mormon  trading  posts 
and  spent  their  money. 

We  have  from  pioneer  chronicles  a  picturesque 
glimpse  of  life  near  one  of  the  camps  of  the  period.  It 
was  on  the  last  night  of  the  year  1853.  There  was  a 
dance  "  in  the  log  house,  over  Spafford  Hall's  store/'  at 
the  mouth  of  Gold  Canon.  Nine  women  were  there, 
including  a  girl  of  ten,  and  one  of  the  nine  was  Princess 
Sarah  Winnemucca,  the  only  Indian  woman  who  min- 
gled socially  with  the  whites.  The  men  numbered  over 
one  hundred.  Besides  stock  raisers,  ranchers,  and  fron- 
tier storekeepers,  there  were  miners  from  the  gulches — 
Oregonians,  Calif  ornians,  apostate  Mormons,  and  winter- 
bound  immigrants — every  stroke  of  whose  picks  brought 
the  day  nearer  when  mining  men  should  rule  Nevada. 
All  night  long  the  dance  continued  in  Spafford  Hall's 
log  house,  and  while  the  festivities  were  at  their  height 
the  Washoe  Indians  stole  every  horse  in  the  settlement. 

The  Mormons  in  1856  made  their  last  efforts  at 
aggressive  colonization,  sending  sixty  to  seventy  fami- 
lies to  Carson  Valley,  and  smaller  parties  to  other  por- 
tions of  Nevada.  Arriving  before  local  elections,  and 
being  well  organized,  they  placed  Mormons  in  nearly 
every  office.  The  miners  held  squatter  meetings,  and 
began  to  talk  about  secession  from  Utah.  While  things 
hung  thus  uncertain,  Brigham  Young,  in  1857,  sud- 
denly abandoned  the  struggle,  partly  because  Salt  Lake 
had  trouble  of  its  own,  partly  because  the  astonish- 
ing growth  of  California  seemed  to  nullify  all  his 
efforts  along  the  eastern  base  of  the  Sierras.  He 
sent  out  messengers,  and  peremptorily  recalled  every 
Mormon  in  Western  Utah.  Some  fifty-four  families  in 
Carson  Valley  left  their  cabins,  sawmills,  claims,  water 
ditches,  and  property  of  every  sort,  giving  it  away  or 
selling  at  a  ruinous  sacrifice,  and  returned  to  Salt 


MORMON  AND  PIONEER  GOLD.  19 

Lake.  The  entire  number  of  Mormons  who  left  West- 
ern Utah  was  four  hundred  and  fifty,  in  one  hundred 
and  twenty-three  wagons,  and  they  were  on  their  way 
to  Salt  Lake  within  three  weeks  after  the  mounted 
messengers  arrived  with  the  commands  of  the  Prophet. 
Some  of  the  little  settlements  were  nearly  depopulated 
for  a  time,  until  "gentiles  and  apostates"  had  filled 
the  vacant  places. 

Orson  Hyde,  the  apostle,  years  later,  when  the  Com* 
stock  miners  had  made  all  Nevada  property  extremely 
valuable,  wrote  to  the  then  owners  of  a  sawmill  he  had 
built  in  "Wassail,"  now  Washoe  Valley,  saying  that 
unless  they  restored  it  at  once  (which  they  never  did) 
the  curse  of  the  Almighty  would  utterly  destroy  them. 
"  This  demand  of  ours  remaining  uncancelled  shall  be 
to  the  people  of  Carson  and  Wassau  Valleys  as  was  the 
Ark  of  God  among  the  Philistines.  You  shall  be  visited 
of  the  Lord  of  Hosts  with  thunder  and  with  earth- 
quakes, with  floods,  with  pestilence,  and  with  famine, 
until  your  names  are  not  known  among  men." 

Carson  County,  thus  abandoned  by  the  Mormons^ 
was  for  a  time  left  without  a  government.  Great  Salt 
Lake  County,  eight  hundred  miles  distant,  claimed 
jurisdiction  for  "  election,  revenue,  and  judicial  pmv 
poses,"  and  was  ordered  by  the  Utah  Legislature  to  take 
possession  of  all  the  records  and  documents.  The 
people  then  drew  up  an  earnest  memorial  to  Congress. 
Even  in  the  summer  time,  they  said,  they  were  desti- 
tute of  all  power  of  enjoying  the  benefits  of  the  govern- 
ments of  Utah  or  California,  while  in  the  winter  com- 
munication was  frequently  cut  off  for  several  months. 
"  Outlaws,  criminals,  and  convicts  abound,  and  the 
region  is  only  saved  from  anarchy  by  an  occasional  ses- 
sion of  Judge  Lynch's  Court." 

The  placer  miners  in  Gold  Canon  were  entirely  in- 
3 


20  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

different  to  the  departure  of  the  Mormons.  They 
worked  on,  washing  auriferous  gravel  from  the  bars, 
or  carrying  rich  earth  from  dry  ravines  to  the  nearest 
stream.  They  lived  in  little  brush  huts,  or  tents,  in 
summer,  and  in  cabins  of  rough  stone  in  winter.  Gam- 
bling and  drinking  were  the  only  amusements.  The 
work  was  very  hard  and  monotonous.  Often  men 
hardly  made  a  living.  Until  a  mill  was  built  in  Car- 
son Valley,  the  price  of  flour  was  apt  to  go  very  high  in 
the  winter — as  high  as  two  and  a  half  dollars  a  pound. 
By  1855  this  price  had  fallen  to  fifteen  cents,  and  pota- 
toes, which  once  sold  for  a  dollar  a  pound,  could  be 
had  for  five  cents. 

At  times  the  miners  suffered  greatly  from  lack 
of  the  necessaries  of  life.  One  winter  many  Gold 
Canon  miners  were  without  boots.  All  that  were  ob- 
tained had  been  carried  across  the  Sierras  by  the 
famous  "snow-shoe  Thompson"  on  his  Norwegian 
snow-skates.  He  often  took  one  hundred  pounds  upon 
each  of  his  journeys  between  Placerville  and  Carson, 
which  he  made  in  three  days  one  way  and  in  two  days 
the  other.  To  add  to  the  miners'  discouragements,  the 
placers  were  nearly  worked  out  by  1857.  In  the  years 
between  1850  and  1857,  inclusive,  the  total  number 
of  miners  at  work  in  Gold  Canon  had  varied  from 
twenty  to  two  hundred.  During  this  time  the  average 
of  the  daily  earnings  of  each  miner  had  diminished 
from  more  than  five  dollars  to  about  two  dollars.  The 
annual  yield  of  the  placers,  which  was  only  $6,000  in 
1850,  rose  to  $118,400  in  1855,  and  then  sank  in  two 
years  more  to  but  $18,000. 

"When  the  last  year  of  the  '50's  began,  "Western 
Utah  still  remained  a  comparatively  unknown  region, 
and  its  pioneers  were  losing  hope.  Trade  had  departed 
with  the  close  of  the  placer-gold  period  of  California. 


MORMON  AND  PIONEER  GOLD. 


21 


In  1854,  three  hundred  wagons  had  passed  Mormon 
Station  in  six  months;  by  1858  hardly  one  tenth  of  that 
number  went  by  this  route.  Most  of  the  scattered 
trading  posts — mere  tents  pitched  in  the  desert  to  meet 
the  pilgrims — disappeared,  and  their  owners  were  on 
cattle  ranches  or  running  saloons  in  gulches  whose 
placer  gold  was  fast  becoming  exhausted.  Nevada 
seemed  to  be  a  "  played-out  country." 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   PLACEK-MINTNG   PERIOD. 

- 

IN*  the  midst  of  the  Carson  and  Washoe  country 
are  the  Washoe  Mountains,  lying  east  of  the  Sierra 
Nevada  and  nearly  parallel  to  that  great  mountain 
chain.  A  series  of  small  alpine  valleys  separate  them 
from  the  Sierras.  The  highest  peak  of  this  world- 
famous  metalliferous  mountain  range  is  7,837  feet 
above  the  sea  and  lies  in  the  midst  of  a  cluster  of  moun- 
tains of  especial  interest  to  the  geologist  and  the^miner. 
Gold  Canon,  with  its  little  stream,  heads  far  up  on  the 
south  side  of  the  peak  and  extends  to  the  Carson  River. 
Other  small  streams  head  upon  the  north  side  of  the 
peak  and  flow  east  through  Six-Mile  and  Seven-Mile 
Canons,  reaching  the  Carson  after  many  devious  turns. 
The  early  miners,  hidden  deep  in  narrow  canons,  knew 
it  as  Sun  Peak,  but  after  the  Comstock  discovery  it 
was  named  Mount  Davidson. 

Here,  in  these  barren  mountains,  within  a  semi- 
circle of  less  than  ten  miles  radius  from  the  top  of 
Mount  Davidson,  was  the  scene  of  some  of  the  most 
typical  and  stupendous  mining  developments  of  which 
the  world  has  any  record.  But  the  tale,  of  which  this 
is  but  the  foreshadowing,  still  belongs  for  a  little  time 
to  the  placer  miners  of  the  early  '50's,  not  to  the 
Nevada  heroes  of  '59. 

Pushing  up  the  gulch,  the  miners  founded  the  little 
village  of  Johntown,  which  was  situated  in  the  ravine 


THE  PLACER-MINING  PERIOD.  93 

four  miles  above  the  first  trading  station  at  its  mouth. 
Between  1851  and  1858  Johntown  was  considered  the 
centre  of  the  mining  activities  of  "Western  Utah,  al- 
though it  never  contained  more  than  a  dozen  shanties, 
as  most  of  the  miners  lived  on  their  claims,  in  tents, 
or  "  dug-outs."  The  old  camp  at  the  mouth  of  the 
canon  became  known  as  Chinatown,  because  by  1856 
the  claims  in  its  vicinity  were  occupied  by  Chinese, 
and  sometimes  nearly  a  hundred  of  them  were  at  work 
there.  The  Americans  left  in  the  camp  made  violent 
objections  to  having  their  settlement  known  as  China- 
town, and  so  they  called  it  Mineral  Eapids,  afterward 
Nevada  City;  finally  it  became  Dayton,  and  so  remains. 

The  mining  region  had  two  rather  curious  news- 
papers soon  after  1854.  One,  the  Scorpion,  was  pub- 
lished at  Mormon  Station;  the  other  was  the  Gold 
Canon  Switch,  published  at  Johntown.  Both  were 
written  on  sheets  of  foolscap,  and  were  passed  from 
hand  to  hand  up  the  gulch  until  they  reached  the  most 
distant  prospector  in  the  range. 

Johntown,  in  the  days  of  its  glory,  was  a  great  place 
for  the  game  known  among  pioneers  as  "  bucking  the 
tiger/'  or  "wrastling  with  the  beast  of  the  jungle." 
"Jacob  Job,  the  leading  merchant,"  says  Dan  De 
Quille,  "  used  to  give  the  boys  all  the  faro  they  could 
take  care  of,  and  often  a  good  deal  more."  He  dealt 
"out  of  hand,"  never  using  a  faro  box.  Old  Billy 
Williams,  of  Carson  Valley,  another  enterprising  gam- 
bler, came  into  Johntown  with  the  card  game  of 
"Twenty-one."  A  few  days  of  free-hand  faro  and 
Twenty-one  during  the  Christmas  holidays  generally 
sent  all  the  luckless  and  reckless  Johntowners  back  to 
toms  and  rockers,  each  man  "  a  total  financial  wreck." 
Johntown  in  those  days  had  also  a  Saturday-night  ball 
every  week  at  "  Dutch  Nick's  saloon,"  and  the  three 


24  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

white  women  in  town,  together  with  Sarah  Winne- 
mucca,  the  Piute  princess,  made  up  the  set. 

In  1857  some  prospectors  found  gold  in  the  clay 
of  Six-Mile  Canon,  a  deep  ravine  that  heads  on  the 
north  side  of  Mount  Davidson,  while  Gold  Canon  is 
on  the  south  side  of  the  same  mountain.  All  the  gold 
in  hoth  canons  had  been  washed  down  from  the  de- 
composed outcroppings  of  the  great  mines,  as  yet  un- 
discovered. From  two  opposite  directions  the  placer 
miners  were  now  unconsciously  approaching  the  source 
of  their  gold.  Tradition  states  that  a  wandering  Mexi- 
can who  worked  a  few  days  in  Gold  Canon  tried  to  tell 
the  miners  that  among  the  mountains  high  above  their 
heads  was  "  mucho  plata,"  "  mucho  bueno  plata,"  but 
his  anxiety  to  have  them  prospect  there  for  silver  mines 
was  not  understood  till  several  years  afterward. 

Looking  back  on  the  situation,  it  certainly  seems 
strange  that  so  much  ignorance  prevailed.  In  modern 
times  every  miner  who  finds  placer  gold  or  loose  min- 
eral of  any  sort,  known  technically  as  "float,"  looks 
at  once  for  its  sources.  But  the  early  prospectors  in 
the  Mount  Davidson  canons  were  typical  miners  of 
their  period;  nearly  every  one  in  the  Western  country 
was  then  equally  ignorant.  They  were  so  entirely  un- 
suspicious of  the  existence  of  the  great  Comstock  lode, 
or  of  any  silver-bearing  rock,  that  when  the  quality  of 
the  placer  gold  they  obtained  deteriorated  as  they  as- 
cended the  canons  toward  Mount  Davidson,  they  could 
not  understand  the  reason.  It  became  lighter  in  colour 
and  less  in  value,  because  it  was  mixed  with  a  percent- 
age of  silver,  and  this  percentage  increased  until  the 
bankers  in  Placerville,  California,  who  bought  their 
gold  dust,  would  only  pay  thirteen  dollars  an  ounce 
where  they  had  formerly  paid  eighteen  dollars. 

Among  the  men  who  were  mining  in  the  ravine 


THE  PLACER-MINING  PERIOD.  25 

when  Johntown  was  in  its  glory  were  several  who 
especially  belong  to  the  narrative.  James  Fennimore, 
or  "  Old  Virginia/'  the  bibulous,  disreputable,  and 
amusing  teamster  of  Eeese's  expedition  of  1851,  rep- 
resented about  the  average  of  the  class  to  which  half 
a  dozen  familiar  Comstock  names  belong — Peter 
O'Kiley,  Patrick  McLaughlin,  Emanuel  Penrod  (known 
as  "  Manny "),  Jack  Bishop,  Joe  Winters  and  loud- 
spoken  Henry  Thomas  Paige  Comstock,  known  as  "  Old 
Pancake,"  because  he  always  thought  himself  too  busy 
to  make  bread.  "  And  even  as,  with  spoon  in  hand, 
he  stirred  up  his  pancake  batter,"  says  Dan  De  Quille, 
"  he  kept  an  eye  on  the  top  of  some  distant  peak,  and 
was  lost  in  speculations."  Comstock  seems  to  have  been 
a  curious  combination  of  shrewdness,  vanity,  igno- 
rance, and  spasmodic  energy.  Born  in  Canada  early 
in  the  century,  he  had  trapped  and  traded  for  many 
years,  beginning  in  Michigan  and  ending  in  New  Mex- 
ico, from  which  region  he  went  to  Salt  Lake  and  drove 
a  flock  of  sheep  to  "  Western  Utah  "  in  1856,  sold  them, 
and  began  mining  in  Gold  Canon. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE   FIRST   QUARTZ  PROSPECTORS. 

MEANWHILE,  in  the  closing  years  of  the  decade, 
the  most  thoughtful  and  intelligent  prospectors  who 
lived  in  Washoe,  two  brothers,  named  Ethan  Allen 
and  Hosea  Ballou  Grosh,  the  sons  of  a  prominent 
Universalist  minister  of  Pennsylvania,  were  steadily  at 
work  searching  from  canon  to  canon  for  silver,  gold, 
and  other  minerals.  No  one  else  in  all  that  region  was 
so  well  equipped  for  the  prospector's  work,  none  better 
deserved  success,  and  none  were  so  unfortunate. 
Among  the  many  dramatic  chapters  of  the  story  of  the 
Comstock,  nothing  surpasses  in  human  interest  the 
simple  story  of  these  two  miners. 

Much  that  has  been  written  about  the  Grosh 
brothers  and  the  "first  discovery  of  silver"  is  mere 
tradition  and  hearsay;  in  fact,  their  story  has  never 
been  given  its  rightful  place  in  the  history  of  Nevada. 
I  have  been  fortunate  in  securing  from  Dr.  Richard 
Maurice  Bucke,  of  London,  Ontario,  the  loan  of  a 
manuscript  account  of  the  Grosh  brothers,  which  for 
the  first  time  makes  a  connected  narrative  possible. 
Dr.  Bucke — their  faithful  friend  and  chronicler,  who 
begins  his  narrative  with:  "In  the  summer  of  1857 
Allen  and  Hosea  Grosh,  George  Brown,  and  the  writer 
were  mining  in  Gold  Canon  " — appears  in  other  records 
of  the  time  as  "  the  young  Canadian  prospector." 

26 


THE  FIRST  QUARTZ  PROSPECTORS.  27 

Leaving  the  mines  after  the  experiences  to  be  told  in 
this  chapter,  he  studied  medicine,  has  been  for  years 
at  the  head  of  an  insane  asylum  in  Canada,  and  is 
known  in  literature  by  various  essays  and  by  his  life 
of  Walt  Whitman. 

Dr.  Bucke  describes  the  Grosh  brothers  as  of  me- 
dium height,  slight  in  figure,  good-looking,  fairly  well 
educated,  very  quick  of  observation,  ready  with  expedi- 
ents, gifted  (especially  Allen)  with  exceptional  powers 
of  original  thought,  thoroughly  honest  and  honourable, 
absolutely  devoted  to  each  other,  industrious,  perse- 
vering, chaste,  sober,  and,  above  all,  "  filled  with  that 
genuine  religion  of  the  heart  which  is  the  salt  of  the 
earth."  They  went  to  California  in  the  "  schooner 
Newton  expedition,"  leaving  Philadelphia  in  February, 
1849,  endured  more  than  ordinary  hardships,  reached 
the  placer  mines  of  El  Dorado  County,  found  little  gold, 
and  in  the  summer  of  1853  reached  the  Western  Utah 
camps. 

They  worked  in  Gold  Canon  until  the  autumn  of 
1854,  making  only  a  bare  living,  then  returned  to  Cali- 
fornia to  prospect  for  quartz,  but  still  without  success. 
They  were  always  working  hard,  but  they  never  seem 
to  have  known  anything  except  hard  times.  They 
just  made  enough  to  keep  themselves  going.  Never- 
theless, they  never  lost  courage,  and  they  hoped  for 
better  days.  Writing  home  from  California  to  their 
father  (March,  1856),  they  give  the  first  hint  of  Nevada 
silver: 

"Ever  since  our  return  from  Utah  we  have  been 
trying  to  get  a  couple  of  hundred  dollars  together  for 
the  purpose  of  making  a  careful  examination  of  a  silver 
lead  in  Gold  Canon.  .  .  .  Native  silver  is  found  in 
Gold  Canon;  it  resembles  thin  sheet-lead  broken  very 
fine,  and  lead  the  miners  suppose  it  to  be.  ...  We 


28  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

found  silver  ore  at  the  forks  of  the  Canon.  A  large 
quartz  vein  shows  itself  in  this  situation." 

They  did  not  obtain  the  two  hundred  dollars,  but 
managed  to  reach  Gold  Canon  with  great  difficulty  in 
September,  and,  as  they  soon  wrote,  "  found  two  veins 
of  silver  at  the  forks  of  Gold  Canon.  .  .  .  One  of  these 
veins  is  a  perfect  monster.  .  .  .  We  have  hopes,  almost 
amounting  to  certainty,  of  veins  crossing  the  Canon  at 
two  other  points."  Then  they  went  back  to  California 
to  try  to  earn  a  little  more  money,  but  failed  completely. 
"  We  have  had  very  bad  luck,"  writes  Allen. 

In  June,  1857,  writing  from  Gold  Canon,  Allen 
Grosh  gives  more  particulars  of  their  discoveries:  "  We 
struck  the  vein  without  difficulty.  ...  We  have  fol- 
lowed two  shoots  down  the  hill,  have  a  third  traced 
positively,  and  feel  pretty  sure  that  there  is  a  fourth." 
Their  letter  contained  a  diagram  which  certainly  re- 
sembles the  south-end  Comstock  ledges.  They  con- 
tinue: "  We  have  pounded  up  some  of  each  variety  of 
rock  and  set  it  to  work  by  the  Mexican  process  .... 
The  rock  of  the  vein  looks  beautiful,  is  very  soft,  and 
will  work  remarkably  easy.  ...  Its  colours  are  violet- 
blue,  indigo-blue,  blue-black,  and  greeenish-black.  It 
differs  very  much  from  that  in  the  Frank  vein — the 
vein  we  discovered  last  fall."  A  few  weeks  later  they 
write  that  the  first  assay  gave  results  of  $3,500  per  ton. 
This  amount  seemed  to  them  impossible;  but  every- 
thing in  the  above  memoranda  confirms  the  idea  that 
they  had  really  struck  the  Comstock  lode.  Additional 
evidence  is  afforded  by  the  story  that  one  of  their 
friends,  Mrs.  Ellis,  who  was  to  furnish  some  capital 
with  which  to  open  a  mine,  was  told  by  them  that 
their  largest  ledge  was  on  what  is  now  Mount  David- 
son, and  she  had  a  piece  of  ore  containing  "  gold,  sil- 
ver, lead,  and  antimony,"  which  description  would  very 


THE  FIRST  QUARTZ  PROSPECTORS.  29 

well  apply  to  Comstock  outcroppings.  A  button  of 
silver  extracted  from  ore  of  one  of  their  claims  was 
shown  to  Dr.  Bucke  by  Allen  Grosh  in  1857.  One 
claim  was  the  "  Pioneer/'  another  the  "  Old  Frank/' 
and  a  third  the  "  Utah  Enterprise." 

Some  remarkable  references  to  the  discoveries  made 
by  the  Grosh  brothers  are  given  by  a  recently  fonnd 
manuscript  written  by  Francis  J.  Hoover,  a  pioneer  of 
'49,  who  died  in  San  Francisco  some  thirty  years  ago. 
It  is  called  A  True  History  of  the  Discovery  of  Silver 
in  Washoe,  then  Utah,  now  the  State  of  Nevada,  and 
is  dated  September  9, 1863.  The  story  it  tells  is  that  in 
July,  1853,  Frank  Antonio,  the  "  Old  Frank "  after 
whom  the  Grosh  brothers  named  one  of  their  mines, 
went  from  El  Dorado  County,  California,  with  five 
others,  to  prospect  in  Western  Utah.  He  had  a  horse 
stolen,  and  while  searching  for  him  "  on  a  table-land 
running  north  and  south  and  broadside  to  the  sunrise  " 
he  found  rich  silver  ore,  which  he  knew,  having  worked 
in  the  silver  mines  of  Brazil.  He  kept  the  specimen 
after  he  returned  to  California,  and  tried  to  interest 
men  in  the  subject,  but  long  without  success. 

Frank  Antonio,  the  Hoover  manuscript  proceeds  to 
say,  then  told  the  Grosh  brothers,  who  had  been  mining 
in  Gold  Canon,  about  his  discovery  of  silver  ore  in  that 
region,  and  finally  helped  them  to  organize  the  "  Frank 
Silver  Mining  Company,"  composed  of  nine  members, 
mostly  Calif ornians.  In  1856  the  Grosh  brothers  found 
what  they  supposed  to  be  the  main  ledge,  and  located 
four  hundred  feet  for  each  member  of  the  company. 
This,  Mr.  Hoover  believes,  was  along  the  axis  of  the 
Comstock  lode.  The  first  claim  notice,  he  says,  was 
posted  on  what  is  now  the  Ophir,  and  another  was  on 
Gould  and  Curry  ground. 

But  the  Grosh  brothers  had  no  capital  and  few 


30        THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

friends.  They  were  compelled  to  work  on  the  nearly 
exhausted  placers  of  Gold  Canon  in  order  to  live  from 
day  to  day.  There  is  a  story  to  the  effect  that  a  stock- 
man and  trader  named  Brown,  at  Gravelly  Ford,  on 
the  Carson,  had  agreed  to  supply  funds,  and  that  they 
wrote  him  about  their  "  monster  vein."  Selling  out, 
he  was  about  to  join  them,  when  some  desperadoes 
murdered  him.  Meanwhile  Hosea  crushed  his  foot 
by  a  glancing  blow  of  a  heavy  pick  some  time  in  August. 
He  had  poor  food  and  was  worn  out  with  overwork. 
Blood  poisoning  set  in,  and  on  September  3d  he  died 
in  their  rude  cabin  of  unhewn  stones  at  the  mouth  of 
American  Flat  Ravine. 

Dr.  Bucke's  manuscript  says:  "At  the  time  of 
Hosea's  accident  they  were  about  even  with  the  world, 
were  not  in  debt,  and  had  nothing  in  hand.  When 
Hosea  was  buried,  Allen  found  himself  some  sixty  dol- 
lars in  debt."  Allen  had  determined  to  cross  the  Sierras 
to  California  and  interest  persons  of  means  in  the  silver 
claims.  Although  every  day  was  now  precious,  as  it 
was  often  dangerous  to  cross  the  mountains  after  Octo- 
ber, he  worked  in  the  placers  until  he  paid  his  debt, 
which  took  until  the  middle  of  November.  Dr.  Bucke 
also  desired  to  go  to  California,  and  the  two,  loading 
a  donkey  with  books,  papers,  clothes,  blankets,  and 
some  provisions,  started  together  upon  one  of  the  sad- 
dest of  journeys. 

Already  it  was  snowing  in  the  Sierras,  and  their 
donkey  straying  back  at  night,  lost  them  four  days 
more.  It  was  November  20th  before  they  left  Washoe 
Valley  to  take  an  Indian  trail  which  crossed  the  eastern 
ridge  of  the  Sierras  some  nine  thousand  feet  high, 
thence  descended  three  thousand  feet  to  Lake  Tahoe, 
went  up  the  main  ridge  of  the  Sierras  some  eleven  thou- 
sand feet  high,  and  followed  the  long  western  slope  into 


THE  FIRST  QUARTZ  PROSPECTORS.  31 

the  California  mining  camps.  The  total  distance  from 
the  last  pioneer  cabin  of  Western  Utah  to  the  flrst  cabin 
occupied  in  winter  in  California  was  about  a  hundred 
miles. 

Snowstorm  after  snowstorm  overwhelmed  them, 
preventing  return,  and  finally,  in  Squaw  Valley,  near 
the  top  of  the  western  ridge,  a  white,  relentless  wall 
surrounded  them  on  every  side.  It  rained,  and  grew 
colder,  then  snowed  heavily.  They  made  several  futile 
attempts  to  cross  the  ridge  with  the  donkey,  exhausted 
their  provisions,  killed  the  donkey  for  food,  whittled 
out  some  rude  snowshoes,  and  on  November  28th  started 
over  the  soft  snow.  They  climbed  for  hours,  but  took 
the  wrong  trail,  and  were  compelled  to  return  to  Squaw 
Valley.  The  next  day  they  managed  to  cross  the  sum- 
mit, and  reached  a  small  summer  cabin  used  by  cattle 
men  known  to  Dr.  Bucke.  Here  they  expected  to  find 
some  flour  and  bacon,  cached  several  months  before,  but 
Indians  had  taken  everything.  It  snowed  heavily,  and 
they  staid  in  the  cabin  until  their  donkey  meat  was 
nearly  gone;  then  they  started  down  the  mountain 
sides.  The  snowshoes  were  useless;  they  kept  finding 
and  losing  the  trail,  and  circled  on  their  own  tracks. 
The  damp  had  spoiled  their  matches  and  gun.  They 
threw  away  everything  they  could — even  Allen's  papers 
— and  ran  for  their  lives.  At  night  they  burrowed  in 
the  snow  for  warmth;  their  clothes  were  constantly 
wet.  It  still  snowed,  and  their  strength  began  to  fail. 
On  December  3d  they  made  only  ten  miles.  That  day 
and  the  next  they  wandered  about  the  rugged  canons 
along  the  Middle  Fork  of  the  American.  On  Decem- 
ber 5th  they  were  still  weaker.  Dr.  Bucke  writes: 
"  This  afternoon,  when  exhausted  and  despairing,  I  sat 
down  and,  weeping,  proposed  to  give  up  and  lie  down 
and  die  where  we  were.  Allen  said,  '  No,  we  will  keep 


32  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

going  as  long  as  we  can  walk/  .  .  .  and  so  after  a  little 
he  persuaded  me  to  make  another  effort." 

On  December  6th  they  were  barely  able  to  crawl 
along,  often  on  hands  and  knees.  They  made  about 
three  quarters  of  a  mile  by  noon,  when  they  came  upon 
the  ditch  and  log  cabins  of  Last  Chance  Mining  Camp. 
"  We  were  no  longer  hungry,"  writes  Dr.  Bucke,  "  and 
when  food  was  offered  us  we  found  we  could  not  eat. 
Our  feet  were  badly  frozen.  "We  could  not  sleep.  We 
got  worse  and  worse.  After  a  few  days  we  became  de- 
lirious. On  the  twelfth  day  after  we  reached  the  camp 
Allen  died." 

Thus  three  young  men,  friends  and  fellow- workers, 
who  were  interested  in  the  development  of  Nevada 
ledges,  had  all  perished — Brown  by  violence,  Hosea 
Grosh  by  accident,  Allen  Grosh  from  exposure  to  the 
Sierra  winter.  Dr.  Bucke,  crippled  and  for  a  time 
broken  in  health,  abandoned  the  life  of  a  miner  and 
returned  to  Canada.  If  Allen  Grosh  had  lived  a  few 
months  longer  the  whole  story  of  the  Comstock  would 
probably  have  been  different,  and  its  earlier  fortunes 
less  chaotic.  By  his  death  the  possession  of  the  great 
Comstock  lode  was  left  to  others,  ignorant  and  unde- 
serving— the  heedless  rabble,  even  then  swearing  loud 
oaths  at  the  unknown  metal  that  clogged  their  sluice 
boxes.  None  of  the  Californians  whom  the  Grosh 
brothers  had  interested  in  their  quartz  ledges  made 
any  immediate  effort  to  take  possession.  In  fact,  the 
clew  was  lost. 

The  Comstockers  themselves  have  always  credited 
the  Grosh  brothers  with  having  taken  at  least  the  first 
steps  toward  the  great  discovery,  and  there  is  a  growing 
belief  among  those  who  have  studied  the  subject  that 
these  two  men  deserve  to  be  remembered  as  the  true 
pioneers  of  the  district.  In  1865,  when  Schuyler  Col- 


THE  FIRST  QUARTZ  PROSPECTORS.  33 

fax  visited  Virginia  City,  he  presided  at  the  ceremony 
of  erecting  a  commemoration  tablet  over  the  grave 
of  Hosea  Grosh  in  the  little  Silver  City  cemetery.  It 
still  remains  for  the  commonwealth  of  Nevada  to  search 
for  the  lonely  grave  of  Allen  Grosh  in  the  Sierras,  and 
then  to  bring  the  remains  of  the  brothers  together  at 
the  foot  of  Mount  Davidson,  under  a  shaft  of  Comstock 
porphyry  on  which  should  be  written,  "  They  were  the 
First  Quartz  Prospectors  on  the  Comstock." 

Eeturning  to  the  Grosh  cabin  of  1857,  we  find 
another  thread  of  the  main  story.  "When  the  surviving 
brother,  Allen,  went  on  that  fatal  journey  to  California, 
he  cast  about  for  some  one  to  leave  in  charge  of  his 
effects.  Comstock  seemed  the  most  available.  It  is 
said  that  a  written  contract  was  drawn  up;  Comstock 
was  to  have  a  one-fourth  interest  in  one  claim  for  keep- 
ing it  from  being  jumped  in  the  absence  of  Grosh,  and 
was  to  live  in  the  little  stone  cabin.  He  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  taken  any  further  into  Allen's  confidence. 
Both  the  brothers  were  very  cautious  and  secretive; 
but  this  claim,  which  was  somewhere  around  the  head 
of  Gold  Canon,  was  now  staked  out,  and  known  to 
many,  so  Allen  probably  thought  it  better  to  give  Com- 
stock a  share  than  to  have  him  persuade  his  associates 
to  take  possession.  It  is  in  perfect  accord  with  what 
we  know  of  these  admirably  equipped  young  prospect- 
ors to  suppose  that  both  the  brothers  understood  Com- 
stock thoroughly,  and  that  they  told  him  nothing  of 
their  "  monster  vein,"  the  Comstock.  The  usual  story 
is  that  Allen  secretly  cached  his  assaying  tools  and 
memoranda  of  their  discoveries  before  Comstock  was 
brought  to  the  cabin,  but  Dr.  Bucke's  narrative  shows 
that  he  threw  all  his  papers  away  in  the  Sierras.  Long 
after  Allen's  death,  when  his  heirs  and  his  former  asso- 
ciates in  California  searched  for  evidence  to  bear  out 


34  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

their  claims  in  court,  little  could  be  found.  Did  Corn- 
stock  obtain  the  clew  in  some  neglected  paper  in  the 
Grosh  cabin?  Or  did  he  live  all  winter  in  the  rude 
stone  hut  where  two  brave,  silent  prospectors  had 
lived  in  poverty,  fighting  slowly  and  intelligently 
toward  one  of  the  greatest  fortunes  ever  lying  before 
treasure-seekers — and  did  he  only  dream  wild  dreams 
and  go  back  to  his  placers  the  same  haphazard  "  Old 
Pancake "  ?  "Was  the  rediscovery  of  the  Comstock 
wholly  an  accident?  The  reader  must  judge  for  him- 
self in  the  light  of  Comstock's  behaviour  during  the 
early  months  of  1859 — the  days  of  Gold  Hill  and 
Ophir. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

DISCOVEKY    OF    THE    COMSTOCK. 

THE  last  year  of  real  placer  mining  in  Nevada  was 
1858,  and  long  before  its  close  the  very  air  grew  full  of 
hints  of  change  and  growth.  Dull  of  comprehension, 
ignorant  of  their  position  upon  the  verge  of  an  unsur- 
passed mining  excitement,  the  seventy-five  or  eighty 
men  now  working  in  the  very  tops  of  the  ravines  east 
and  south  of  Mount  Davidson  were  nevertheless  begin- 
ning to  feel  the  thrill  and  presence  of  the  spirit  of  dis- 
covery. For  the  first  time  in  years  there  was  talk  of 
prospecting  parties  throughout  the  district  to  look  up 
better  claims. 

Johntown  was  again  the  centre  of  activities  in  the 
winter  of  1858-' 5 9,  for  the  weather  was  unusually  cold, 
freezing  the  water  in  the  gulches,  so  that  the  miners 
had  a  season  of  enforced  idleness.  They  spent  it  in 
discussing  the  situation,  which  certainly  contained 
elements  of  pathos  and  sarcasm.  Nearly  all  the  John- 
town  miners  of  1858  were  men  who  had  been  in  the 
region  for  six  or  seven  years.  The  only  change  in 
their  occupations  had  come  about  as  the  character  of 
the  "  diggings  "  changed.  At  first  they  had  mined  on 
the  "  bars/'  then  on  the  "  flats,"  then  on  the  sides  of 
ravines,  ascending  toward  higher  ridges.  The  ordinary 
auriferous  gravel  became  of  darker  colour;  the  soil 
of  the  hills  was  heavier  and  heavier  clay,  though  still 
containing  gold.  The  ground  was  difficult  to  handle — 
4  35 


36  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

full  of  what  they  called  "  sand  of  iron  "  and  a  substance 
they  called  lead,  and  a  "  heavy  blue  stuff  "  that  carried 
off  the  quicksilver.  Sometimes  a  miner,  after  working 
all  day  long,  from  sunrise  to  dark,  would  go  home  with 
his  back  aching  from  the  labour  of  cleaning  his  sluice 
box  every  few  minutes  from  the  "  accursed  base  metal " 
that  clogged  every  riffle.  Down  it  was  thrown,  with 
fierce  maledictions,  to  the  bottom  of  the  ravine. 

Our  story  follows  the  fortunes  of  a  little  group  of 
Gold  Canon  miners — John  Bishop,  known  as  "  Big 
French  John,"  Aleck  Henderson,  Jack  Yount,  and 
"  Old  Virginia."  One  day,  about  the  20th  of  January, 
while  they  were  on  the  ridge  immediately  east  of  the 
canon  in  which  the  town  of  Gold  Hill  was  afterward 
situated,  "  Old  Virginia  "  pointed  across  to  a  small, 
low  mound,  and  said,  "  Boys,  I  believe  that  some  good 
diggings  are  waiting  for  us  there." 

"  Let  us  go  and  try  it,"  one  of  them  answered. 

"  Some  other  time,  boys:  it's  a  deep  gulch,  and  late 
in  the  day." 

The  "other  time"  came  on  a  Saturday,  January 
28th,  when  the  four  men  went  to  the  mound  as  agreed 
upon.  Bishop,  who  had  a  shovel,  pushed  it  full  of  earth 
with  his  foot.  "  Old  Virginia  "  found  a  gopher  hole, 
and  took  a  panful  from  the  loose  earth  brought  up  from 
a  foot  or  two  underneath.  They  went  down  to  a  spring, 
and,  washing  it  out,  found  gold.  They  immediately 
staked  out  four  placer  claims  of  fifty  feet  each,  the  limit 
allowed  by  the  mining  law  in  that  district.  "  Old  Vir- 
ginia," who  was  held  to  be  the  discoverer,  took  the  first 
choice. 

According  to  nearly  every  account  of  the  real  dis- 
coverers, Comstock  only  "  came  in  afterward  "  ;  but  his 
own  narrative  claims  entire  priority  and  pre-eminence. 
"  About  the  middle  of  January,"  he  says,  "  I  saw  some 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  COMSTOCK.  37 

queer-looking  stuff  in  a  gopher  hole.  I  ran  my  hand 
in  and  took  out  a  handful  of  dirt,  and  saw  silver  and 
gold  in  it.  Big  John  Bishop  and  Old  Virginia  were 
with  me.  When  I  found  it  they  were  sitting  on  the 
side  of  the  hill  a  couple  of  hundred  yards  from  me.  I 
took  up  five  claims." 

The  day  after  the  discovery  all  the  Johntowners 
came  over  to  the  little  mound  and  passed  their  opinions 
upon  the  new  diggings.  The  place  was  so  small  that 
most  of  them  thought  but  little  of  the  camp.  However, 
it  had  to  be  named,  of  course,  and  that  was  always  a 
difficult  task.  The  fortunate  or  grotesque  names  of 
camps  have  come  by  accident;  when  the  miner  at- 
tempts deliberately  to  give  a  title  to  the  place,  his 
imagination  generally  fails  him.  It  was  so  in  this  case. 
Canon-town,  Gold-town,  and  finally  Gold  Hill  were  the 
principal  suggestions,  and  the  latter  was  adopted,  be- 
cause, according  to  the  naive  explanation  of  Big  French 
John,  "  it  was  decidedly  not  Gold  Canon." 

In  a  few  weeks  the  miners  on  Gold  Hill  ran  into 
"  pay  dirt "  that  was  surprisingly  rich  for  the  district. 
They  actually  took  out  from  fifteen  to  twenty-five 
dollars  a  day  to  the  man.  They  were  working  in  the 
detritus  of  the  south  end  of  the  Comstock,  Nature's 
own  concentration  of  many  feet  of  outcroppings,  worn 
down  and  mixed  with  wash  from  the  peaks  of  the 
Washoe  Eange.  Great  mines  of  the  future — Belcher, 
Crown  Point,  Yellow  Jacket,  Imperial,  Kentuck,  Em- 
pire, and  others  that  yielded  immense  sums  a  few  years 
later — lay  hidden  in  the  solid  quartz  and  vein  matter 
that  began  hardly  ten  feet  beneath  the  surface. 

Old  Virginia  had  taken  up  a  spring  in  the  ravine, 
but  all  the  miners  used  it  without  rental.  The  dirt 
picked  out  from  their  respective  claims  was  carried 
down  to  the  water's  edge  and  washed  there,  old-style 


38        THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

rockers  being  used.  Pretty  soon  they  had  to  pound 
the  earth  up  with  a  pick  handle,  it  grew  so  hard  as  they 
dug  deeper  into  the  hill.  It  contained  plenty  of  the 
same  "blue  stuff"  that  had  worried  the  miners  in 
Gold  Canon,  but  they  were  becoming  used  to  it  by  this 
time,  and,  besides,  the  claims  were  paying  better  than 
anything  else  in  the  mountains. 

The  most  of  Johntown  moved  there,  abandoning 
the  shanties  in  Gold  Canon,  and  Gold  Hill  soon  had  a 
store,  a  saloon,  and  a  cheap  restaurant.  "  Brush  huts 
and  a  tent  lodging-house  among  the  sage  brush  "  was  a 
writer's  description.  Every  one  was  pleased  with  the 
change  except  the  Carson  Valley  ranchers,  whose  pack 
mules,  loaded  with  eatables  to  be  sold  to  the  miners, 
had  to  travel  farther  and  climb  much  higher. 

Prospecting  continued  throughout  the  early  months 
of  1859.  Those  who  were  not  mining  upon  Gold  Hill 
took  pick  and  pan  whenever  they  had  a  day  to  spare, 
and  tried  in  vain  to  make  wages  in  the  gulches.  Some- 
times they  found  strange  "  stuff  "  that  was  not  gold, 
and  very  small  deposits  of  the  precious  metal — 
"  pockets  "  in  the  hillside  that  yielded  twenty  or  thirty 
dollars  before  they  were  exhausted.  This  aimless  pros- 
pecting went  on  for  several  months,  every  one  looking 
for  another  Gold  Hill. 

The  real  point  of  interest  had  shifted  to  the  head 
of  Six-Mile  Canon.  Two  Irish  miners — Peter  O'Kiley 
and  Patrick  McLaughlin,  long  among  the  best  known 
of  the  Johntowners,  and  old-time  comrades — had  been 
unfortunate  in  their  recent  ventures.  Comstock  said 
afterward  that  he  was  paying  them  wages  at  this  time, 
and  that  they  were  working  on  his  claims,  but  in  fact 
they  had  determined  to  go  to  the  Walker  Eiver  Moun- 
tains to  some  new  placers  of  whose  richness  many 
stories  were  told,  and  would  have  started  at  once,  but 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  COMSTOCK.  39 

had  no  money.  It  was  necessary  to  dig  it  out  of  the 
ground,  so  they  agreed  to  try  one  more  claim  in  Six- 
Mile  Canon,  and  then  leave  for  Walker  River  as  soon 
as  they  had  a  hundred  dollars  "  for  a  grub  stake." 

The  only  piece  of  unoccupied  ground  that  seemed 
at  all  promising  was  on  the  hillside  above  all  the  other 
claims  in  the  canon,  near  a  spring  known  as  "  Old  Man 
Caldwell's,"  where  some  one  had  made  a  short  sluice 
box  for  mining,  but  had  evidently  thought  the  spot 
unprofitable.  They  used  rockers  for  a  fortnight  upon 
their  claim,  carrying  the  dirt  to  the  spring,  but  the 
ground  was  hard,  and  paid  them  less  than  two  dollars 
apiece  for  a  long  day's  work.  Remembering  the  inex- 
plicable location  of  the  Gold  Hill  diggings  on  the  top 
of  a  mound,  and  guided  in  some  degree  by  the  colour 
of  the  soil,  they  now  started  a  trench  straight  up  the 
hill,  in  hard  blue  clay  and  yellowish  gravel. 

The  little  spring  wasted  down  the  slope,  and  they 
thought  it  would  be  a  good  plan  to  dig  a  pit  in  the  clay 
so  as  to  reservoir  a  few  barrels  of  water.  They  began 
this  early  in  June,  and  here,  at  a  depth  of  four  feet, 
they  came  upon  a  deposit  of  the  same  sort  of  dark  heavy 
soil  that  had  been  found  at  Gold  Hill.  It  was  even 
darker,  and  sparkled  with  minute  flakes  of  gold.  Run- 
ning swiftly  to  the  mining  trench  fifty  feet  distant, 
one  of  them  brought  a  pan  and  tested  the  new  find. 
The  bottom  of  the  vessel  seemed  fairly  covered  with 
precious  metal  as  soon  as  the  gravel,  clay,  and  "  black 
stuff  "  were  stirred  up  and  allowed  to  slide  over  the 
edge. 

This  was  the  top  of  the  world-famous  Ophir,  the 
north  end  of  the  Comstock.  The  main  masses  of  the 
mighty  fissure  vein  extended  in  parallel  lines  of  frag- 
mentary projections  from  the  black  mound  of  the 
Ophir  south  to  the  black  mound  of  Gold  Hill.  At  some 


£0  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

remote  period,  ages  before,  the  great  lode  had  risen 
hundreds  of  feet  higher;  uncounted  centuries  of 
chemical  and  physical  action  had  worn  and  broken  it 
until  thousands  of  tons  of  the  hardest  of  quartz 
was  as  soft  as  clay  and  as  fine  as  sand.  This  is  what 
miners  mean  by  "  decomposed  quartz "  ;  it  can  be 
panned  out  or  washed  in  a  rocker,  long  torn,  or  sluice 
box. 

O'Eiley  and  McLaughlin  shouted  with  delight;  they 
had  found  another  group  of  rich  placers,  alloyed,  to  be 
sure,  with  the  same  base  metal  that  made  their  gold  so 
hard  to  sell  to  the  bankers,  but  still  as  good  as  the  best 
in  that  district.  No  more  notions  of  Walker  Eiver; 
they  began  mining  in  desperate  haste,  first  sticking 
up  a  claim  notice  of  fifty  feet  apiece.  By  sunset  they 
had  two  or  three  hundred  dollars  in  hand,  and  a  black 
streak  of  what  all  the  miners  considered  "  bogus  stuff  " 
began  to  extend  down  the  slope. 

Comstock  made  his  appearance  just  as  they  were 
finishing  the  last  clean-up  for  the  day.  He  had  been 
looking  for  his  lost  mustang,  and  now  came  galloping 
down  the  ridge,  with  his  long  legs  dangling  in  the 
sage  tops.  He  came  up  in  a  state  of  great  excitement 
and  shouted:  "  You  have  struck  it,  boys!  " 

Jumping  from  his  horse  and  leaping  into  the  ex- 
cavation, he  made  a  rapid  examination  of  the  prospects. 
Then  turning  to  'the  two  warm-hearted  and  good- 
natured  miners,  he  told  them  in  a  voice  of  genial  and 
confidential  friendship  that  unless  they  managed  the 
matter  carefully  they  could  never  hold  the  claim.  The 
three  men  sat  down  on  the  bank  to  talk  it  over. 

"  Look  here,"  said  Comstock,  "  this  spring  was  Old 
Man  Caldwell's.  You  know  that;  there's  his  sluice 
box.  Well,  Manny  Penrod  and  I  bought  his  claim 
last  winter,  and  we  sold  a  tenth  interest  to  Old  Virginia 


DISCOVERY  OF  THE  COMSTOCK.  41 

the  other  day.  You  two  fellows  must  let  Manny  and 
I  in  on  equal  shares." 

O'Kiley  and  McLaughlin  objected  strenuously  at 
first,  but  they  were  a  little  afraid  of  Comstock,  and,  be- 
sides, fifty  feet  of  a  placer  claim  was  more  than  they 
could  work  in  a  season;  it  did  not  amount  to  much, 
after  all.  So  when  Comstock  added,  by  way  of  a 
clincher  to  the  argument,  that  five  persons,  of  whom 
he  was  one,  had  once  located  one  hundred  and  sixty 
acres  upon  the  bench  as  a  stock  range,  and  he  thought 
they  were  within  its  boundaries,  they  gave  up  like 
lambs  and  agreed  to  everything  that  Comstock  pro- 
posed. 

It  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the  free  and  easy  life 
of  the  time  that  O'Riley  and  McLaughlin  did  not  de- 
mand any  proof  of  Comstock's  statement.  In  reality, 
his  claims  to  the  spring  had  some  colour,  as  he  and 
his  friends  had  used  it,  though  no  water-right  was  ever 
recorded.  He  might  possibly  have  posted  a  mere  notice 
on  the  "  stock  range,"  but  it  could  only  hold  for  ten 
days,  as  he  never  paid  any  fees  nor  occupied  the  tract. 
Every  miner  who  owned  a  horse  turned  him  out  on  the 
unf  enced  hills. 

Now,  and  most  unexpectedly,  occurred  the  first 
"  freeze-out "  on  the  Comstock.  Hitherto  the  miners 
had  dwelt  together  in  a  sort  of  Arcadia,  under  their  own 
laws,  and  were  fairly  just  to  each  other.  Comstock 
introduced  a  new  deal.  Having  provided  for  himself 
and  Manny  Penrod,  he  went  on  to  Gold  Hill  before 
the  news  of  the  strike  reached  that  place  and  bought 
out  Old  Virginia's  tenth  interest  in  Caldwell's  spring 
for  the  mustang  he  rode.  Subsequent  tradition  adds 
the  picturesque  and  very  probable  item  of  "  a  bottle  of 
whisky." 

Penrod's  testimony  is:  "  We  thought  it  was  a  con- 


42  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

tinuation  of  the  placers  that  had  heen  worked 
lower  down  "  (at  Gold  Hill).  "  There  was  about  six 
inches  of  pay  dirt;  it  increased  as  we  went  up  the 
hill.  On  June  12th  the  pay  streak  turned  and  went 
down  into  a  ledge."  This  fixes  June  12th  as  the  date 
of  the  actual  discovery  of  the  Comstock.  It  caused  no 
excitement,  however,  but  was  a  source  of  regret,  as  it 
seemed  to  show  that  the  diggings  would  soon  be  ex- 
hausted. 

Comstock's  own  account  of  the  whole  matter  is  so 
artistic  a  piece  of  braggadocio  that  it  must  be  quoted 
in  order  to  round  the  narrative:  "I  had  owned  the 
greater  part  of  Gold  Hill;  had  given  Sandy  Bowers, 
Joe  Plato,  William  Knight,  and  others  their  claims 
there.  At  Ophir,  O'Kiley  and  McLaughlin  were  work- 
ing for  me.  I  caved  the  cut  in  and  went  after  my  party 
to  form  a  company.  With  my  party  I  opened  the  lead 
and  called  it  Comstock  lode.  We  started  to  rocking 
with  my  water.  I  continued  owning  the  claim,  locating 
1,400  feet  for  myself  for  the  use  of  my  water  to  the 
company."  Comstock  goes  on  to  explain  how  he  acted 
as  good  angel  to  the  camp,  and  gave  rich  mines  away 
right  and  left.  "  I  located  the  Savage  claim — showed 
the  ground  to  Old  Man  Savage.  I  located  the  Gould 
and  Curry — went  into  the  valley  and  got  old  Daddy 
Curry  to  come  down,  and  put  him  in  possession." 

The  little  drama  was  in  truth  very  simple.  Com- 
stock, one  of  the  most  ignorant  and  bombastic  of  men, 
had  managed  by  loud  talk  and  pure  impudence  to  make 
himself  the  most  important  personage  of  the  epoch. 
He  had  never  really  found  anything,  but  he  claimed 
everything  in  sight.  In  a  few  weeks,  when  miners 
came  from  all  points  of  Washoe,  the  most  important 
man  in  the  region  was  thought  to  be  Comstock. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

PLACER   MINING   ON   QUARTZ   LEDGES. 

AGAIN  the  real  problem  presents  itself  to  the  dis- 
cerning reader — When  will  these  stupid  people  find  out 
their  own  good  fortune?  Not  until  it  is  crammed 
down  their  throats,  like  a  dose  of  quinine.  That  is 
already  evident  to  any  one  who  has  followed  the  amus- 
ing career  of  this  Peterkin  family  of  stumbling  pros- 
pectors, whose  Dunciad  of  woes  regarding  troublesome 
silver  float  all  the  way  up  the  gulches  from  Johntown 
has  been  almost  beyond  belief.  The  Grosh  brothers, 
even  admitting  that  their  "monster  vein"  was  some 
other  ledge  than  the  Comstock,  would  not  have  waited 
five  minutes  after  the  Gold  Hill  discovery  before  they 
had  filed  on  the  main  lode  for  gold-  and  silver-bearing 
quartz,  and  in  an  hour  they  would  have  been  sinking 
a  shaft.  Not  so  was  it  with  these  earliest  Comstockers, 
who  were  mere  survivals,  mining  autochthons  of  the 
placer-camp  age. 

Midsummer  of  1859,  therefore,  became  the  placer 
period  of  the  Comstock.  The  surface  was  rich  beyond 
the  wildest  dreams  of  wandering  Washoe  prospectors. 
The  steady  thud  of  Johntowner  picks,  the  swish-swash 
of  their  rockers,  was  heard  at  last  in  the  midst  of 
debris  from  outcroppings  of  the  greatest  mineral  de- 
posit in  America.  The  miners  were  literally  sleeping 
upon  mounds  of  gold  and  silver.  But  even  at  this  late 
moment,  when  the  news  of  their  discovery  was  speeding 

43 


44  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

over  Sierras  and  Eockies  to  men  who  were  wise  enough 
to  read  the  secret  of  the  "  sand  of  iron  "  and  the  "  hard 
blue  stuff  "  at  a  single  glance,  O'Biley,  McLaughlin, 
Comstock,  Penrod,  and  the  rest  were  every  day  taking 
out  from  five  hundred  to  one  thousand  dollars  in  gold  to 
each  man  at  work,  and  were  throwing  away  several  times 
as  much  in  silver.  Not  one  of  them  was  able  to  rise 
to  the  occasion.  The  myriad-sided  hints  of  the  past 
had  been  wasted  upon  these  fools  of  fortune. 

Some  local  excitement  occurred,  of  course.  Ranch- 
ers came  north  from  Eagle  and  Carson  valleys,  east 
from  the  lands  about  Washoe  Lake,  south  from  the 
Truckee  meadows.  A  few  herdsmen  and  prospectors 
arrived  from  the  desert.  Scattered  miners  in  the 
gulches  abandoned  their  claims  and  hastened  to  Corn- 
stock's  diggings.  But  from  all  these  sources  not  more 
than  a  hundred  persons  entered  claims  that  summer 
along  the  lode  or  near  to  it.  Talk  of  quartz  was  occa- 
sionally heard,  but  only  of  gold  quartz;  and  as  the 
deposit  became  more  solid,  cheap  Mexican  arrastras, 
run  by  mule  power,  were  erected  to  grind  lumps  that 
were  too  hard  to  be  broken  with  the  handle  of  a  pick. 

Comstock  was  exuberantly  happy  for  a  few  weeks. 
His  Indians  did  most  of  the  work,  and  all  he  had  to 
do  was  to  watch  the  sluice  boxes  and  take  visitors 
around.  A  party  of  ladies  from  Carson  Valley  were 
upon  the  claim  in  July,  and,  as  is  the  custom  in  placer 
camps,  each  lady  was  offered  a  "  pan  of  dirt  "  by  Com- 
stock, being  expected  to  wash  it  out  and  keep  the  gold 
as  a  memento.  The  pans  would  have  averaged  forty 
or  fifty  dollars  apiece,  but  Old  Pancake  had  taken  a 
fancy  to  one  of  the  number,  and  so  he  slipped  in  a  large 
handful  of  "  dust/'  giving  her,  as  tradition  states,  more 
than  three  hundred  dollars.  Comstock  was  wildly 
avaricious  when  mining,  and  as  wildly  extravagant 


PLACER  MINING  ON  QUARTZ  LEDGES.         45 

with  his  gold  when  obtained.  He  bought  whatever 
took  his  fancy,  and  gave  it  away  the  next  minute.  His 
only  pleasure  seemed  to  be  the  spending  of  money, 
and  most  of  his  comrades  were  very  much  like  him  in 
this  particular. 

Pleasant  Hill  Camp  was  the  first  name  given  to  the 
settlement  at  Ophir,  and  some  called  it  "  Mount  Pleas- 
ant Point."  Ophir  and  Ophir  Diggings  were  also 
names  used  for  a  time.  By  August  there  were  a  dozen 
tents,  dug-outs,  or  shanties  on  the  present  site  of 
Virginia  City.  The  name  Winnemucca  was  then  sug- 
gested as  preferable  to  the  earlier  titles;  but  one  mid- 
night Old  Virginia,  going  home  with  the  boys  and  a 
bottle  of  whisky,  after  an  unusually  protracted  revel, 
fell  down  when  he  reached  his  cabin,  broke  the  bottle, 
and  rising  to  his  knees,  with  the  bottle-neck  in  his 
hand,  hiccoughed,  "I  baptize  this  ground  Virginia 
Town! "  A  reveller's  shout  arose,  and  it  was  decided 
to  return  to  the  saloon  and  celebrate  the  new  name 
for  the  rest  of  the  night.  It  took  at  once,  although 
"  town  "  was  soon  broadened  to  "  city."  Under  every 
one  of  these  titles  the  place  was  recognised  almost 
from  its  foundation  as  the  most  important  town  in 
Washoe  district.  Still,  there  was  no  hotel,  and  only 
one  small  restaurant.  Newcomers  brought  their  blank- 
ets and  slept  in  the  sage  brush  on  the  treeless  hill- 
sides. 

Gold  Hill,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  located  by 
four  men,  five  others  coming  in  later.  Only  one  of 
the  nine  managed  to  retain  his  interest  for  any  length 
of  time.  Old  Virginia  gave  " Little  French  John" 
nine  feet  of  his  claim.  He  sold  the  rest  of  his  claim 
of  fifty  feet  at  fifty  dollars  a  foot.  Big  French  John 
and  the  rest  sold  some  time  after  at  prices  ranging  from 
fifty  to  one  hundred  dollars  a  foot.  Rodgers  com- 


46  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

mitted  suicide.  Old  Virginia,  while  on  a  spree  in  1861, 
was  thrown  from  a  horse  and  killed.  All  of  the  origi- 
nal Gold  Killers  speculated,  spent  the  money  they 
made,  and  died  poor,  while  fortunes  were  being  taken 
from  the  ground  they  had  owned. 

The  North  End  discoverers  were  no  more  fortu- 
nate. McLaughlin  sold  for  $3,500,  a  few  years  later 
was  cooking  for  a  gang  of  men  for  forty  dollars  a 
month,  died  a  pauper,  and  was  buried  at  public  ex- 
pense. Penrod  sold  for  $8,500  toward  the  close  of  the 
year,  and  soon  spent  all  his  money.  Osborn,  who  had 
obtained  a  sixth  interest  in  the  Ophir  by  building  a 
seventy-five-dollar  arrastra  for  the  company,  sold  for 
$7,000,  and  Winters  did  no  better;  both  men  were 
poor  a  few  years  later.  O'Kiley  hung  on  longer  than 
any  one  else — even  Comstock — and  so  received  $40,000. 
This  he  spent  in  stock  speculation,  and  finally  died  in 
an  insane  asylum. 

Comstock  himself,  who  belonged  to  both  camps, 
was  even  more  typical  of  his  kind.  Two  months  after 
the  ledge  was  struck  he  sold  all  his  interests  for  $11,000. 
He  lost  every  dollar  he  had,  came  back  to  the  Comstock, 
found  better  men  everywhere,  wandered  off  on  lonely 
prospecting  tours  in  Nevada  and  the  Rockies,  and 
finally  committed  suicide  in  Montana.  His  petty 
schemes  among  his  fellows,  his  simple  egotism  and 
bombastic  lavishness,  his  brief  authority  as  father  of 
the  camp,  his  failure  to  seize  the  unparalleled  oppor- 
tunity, his  return  to  pick,  pan,  and  prospecting  horn, 
his  death  under  the  cloud  of  partial  insanity — all  these 
are  among  the  dramatic  elements  of  this  strange  life 
history. 

So  had  this  group  of  prospectors  remained  wholly 
unteachable,  clinging  to  their  folly,  rejoicing  to  be 
able  to  sell  their  claims  for  comparative  pittances. 


PLACER  MINING  ON  QUARTZ  LEDGES.         47 

Like  the  classic  fool  of  Proverbs,  Comstock  and 
the  rest  of  them  had  been  brayed  as  in  a  mortar,  but 
their  folly  remained.  These  men  had  in  their  undis- 
puted possession  wealth  enough  to  have  made  each 
one  of  them  richer  than  the  late  Jay  Gould.  Com- 
stock, had  he  risen  to  the  opportunity,  might  soon  have 
flashed  across  the  skies  of  London  and  Paris  the  great- 
est speculator  of  the  century,  another  John  Law,  run- 
ning printing  presses  night  and  day  to  supply  the  de- 
mand for  Nevada  mining  stock  from  claims  staked  out 
across  Flowery  Eidge  and  miles  beyond  in  the  desert. 
As  it  was,  each  one  of  them  believed  he  was  receiving 
more  than  his  interests  were  really  worth.  They  had 
never  understood  the  slowly  accumulating  evidence 
pointing  to  the  Comstock  lode  as  a  great  storehouse 
of  mineral  wealth.  Others  also,  who  followed  them, 
undervalued  opportunity,  and  yielded  in  time  to  the 
old  law  of  the  survival  of  the  strongest,  but  none  could 
again  give  so  much  for  so  little. 

Thus  the  placer  period  comes  wholly  to  an  end 
in  falsely  shrewd  bargains.  The  goddess,  so  long  woo- 
ing these  stumbling  men,  tires  at  last  and  turns  away 
with  laughter  in  her  eyes.  Beyond  the  Sierras,  in  the 
forests  where  the  body  of  Allen  Grosh  lies,  there  is 
the  sound  of  an  advancing  army,  and  thither  the  god- 
dess looks,  choosing  new  favourites.  Already  those 
whose  day  is  done  are  forgotten. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE    RUSH   ACROSS    THE    SIERRAS. 

THE  first  news  of  the  mines  that  was  heard  west 
of  the  Sierras  made  many  persons  think  that  the 
district  contained  only  shallow  placers.  Settlers  along 
the  eastern  slope  of  the  mountains,  from  Honey  Lake 
to  Carson  Canon,  did  not  hesitate,  but  poured  into  the 
new  gold  region.  One  of  them  stood  by  and  saw  "  the 
famous  Mr.  Comstock  and  Old  Gentleman  Virginia  " 
take  out  $1,900  in  placer  gold  in  one  day. 

At  Nevada  City,  California,  in  the  midst  of  one 
of  the  most  permanent  quartz-mining  districts  of 
America,  the  discovery  was  made  that  caused  the  great 
silver  rush.  A  plain  Truckee  farmer  named  Harrison 
rode  over  to  the  diggings  quite  early,  when  Virginia 
City  consisted  of  only  two  tents.  He  saw  Long  John 
Bishop  and  his  partners  throwing  away  masses  of 
"  blue  stuff,"  and  they  told  him  it  was  worse  than  use- 
less. Picking  up  a  few  pieces,  he  carried  them  home, 
and  afterward  to  Nevada  City.  The  problem  had  at 
last  reached  a  set  of  men  who  were  in  the  habit  of  in- 
vestigating what  they  did  not  understand.  The  two 
best  assayers  in  the  town  tested  the  fateful  "  blue  stuff  " 
and  demonstrated  that  a  ton  of  it  was  worth  $1,595  in 
gold  and  $4,791  in  silver,  or  a  total  of  $6,356.  This 
was  the  base  metal  so  long  thrown  away  by  the  guile- 
less and  ignorant  miners  of  Western  Utah!  Tons  and 
tons  of  it  were  said  to  be  in  sight  in  the  "  cut "  of  the 

48 


THE  RUSH  ACROSS  THE  SIERRAS.  49 

Ophir,  on  the  hillside  below,  and  at  the  Yellow 
Jacket. 

Harrison,  the  inquiring  rancher,  appears  to  have  gone 
back  to  his  wheat  fields,  but  though  it  was  nearly  mid- 
night before  the  value  of  the  rock  was  known,  half  the 
people  within  a  radius  of  five  miles  had  the  story  before 
breakfast  time.  Then  the  miners  assembled  to  talk  the 
matter  over,  and  found  that  two  of  the  best  men  in 
the  district,  Judge  Walsh  and  Joe  Woodworth,  had 
loaded  a  pack  mule,  saddled  their  horses,  and  started 
long  before  daybreak  for  Virginia  City.  They  could 
not  have  travelled  faster  if  a  score  of  vigilantes  had 
been  on  their  track.  This  rapid  stroke  of  energy  was  like 
a  match  thrown  into  gunpowder.  Hundreds  of  miners 
left  their  claims  and  began  to  pour  over  the  mountains 
on  foot,  on  horseback,  or  in  wagons,  hewing  out  new 
trails  and  roadways. 

It  should  be  explained  that  the  Pacific  coast  had 
long  been  a  region  of  periodical  mining  excitements. 
Away  back  in  1852  it  was  reported  that  the  ocean  was 
washing  up  gold  on  the  beaches  of  Humboldt  County 
— so  much,  in  fact,  that,  as  Ross  Browne  said,  it  was 
generally  believed  that  any  enterprising  man  could 
take  his  hat  and  a  wheelbarrow  and  in  half  an  hour 
gather  enough  gold  to  last  him  for  life.  A  year  or 
two  later  the  Kern  River  rush  nearly  depopulated  the 
northern  half  of  California,  and  for  three  hundred 
miles  the  dry  and  dusty  plains  were  fairly  spotted  with 
thousands  of  eager  prospectors  and  speculators;  most 
of  whom  returned,  like  the  Gold  Bluffers,  ragged  and 
penniless.  Next  came  the  still  more  memorable  rush 
to  Eraser  River,  British  Columbia.  Farms  were  aban- 
doned, crops  rotted  in  the  fields.  Thirty  or  forty  thou- 
sand Californians  poured  into  -English  territory,  when 
suddenly  the  gold  gave  out  and  the  miners  returned 


50        THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

disconsolate.  Every  one  had  said  that  now,  at  last, 
there  was  an  end  to  such  sudden  excitements;  it  would 
be  impossible  to  impose  again  upon  public  credulity 
and  upset  the  commercial  progress  of  staid  communi- 
ties. Suddenly  the  air  rang  with  a  new  cry,  "  Washoe! 
Washoe!  "  and  the  old  Forty-niners  were  ready  for  the 
adventure. 

Only  a  part  of  the  great  Washoe  rush  came  in  1859, 
for  the  season  was  too  far  advanced.  But  as  soon  as 
reports  from  those  who  first  crossed  the  mountains 
came  back  to  the  California  settlements,  men  went 
wild  with  excitement.  Judge  Walsh,  on  the  12th  of 
August,  had  managed  to  buy  out  nearly  the  whole 
Comstock  group  of  claims,  and  Joe  Woodworth  also 
"got  in  on  the  main  lode."  Men  of  every  type  and 
nationality  crowded  the  mountain  roads  and  staked 
Out  prospects  on  every  hand. 

A  correspondent  of  the  Sacramento  Union,  writing 
from  Ophir  Diggings,  October  22d,  reported  that  the 
total  yield  of  the  half-abandoned  Gold  Canon  claims 
for  1859  was  $24,000,  obtained  by  forty  miners  work- 
ing one  hundred  and  twenty  days.  Fifty  Chinese 
miners  in  the  Carson  River  placers  obtained  about 
$35,000  the  same  season.  Of  course  the  above  does 
not  include  Comstock  returns,  excepting  a  very  little 
of  the  first  placer  yield  there.  But,  according  to  figures 
published  in  the  Calif ornian  newspapers  late  in  1859, 
"  Ophir,  Central,  Mexican,  and  Gold  Hill "  claims  had 
yielded  $275,000  before  the  winter  storms  prevented 
further  work. 

One  of  the  most  severe  winters  ever  known  in  the 
region  now  followed,  five  or  six  feet  of  snow  falling  in 
Virginia  City.  Firewood  was  very  hard  to  obtain,  and 
the  tents  and  huts  of  the  pioneers  were  extremely  un- 
comfortable. Many  lived  in  "  dug-outs,"  which  they 


THE  RUSH  ACROSS  THE  SIERRAS.  51 

called  "  holes  in  the  wall."  All  outside  communica- 
tions were  cut  off.  Cattle,  horses,  and  animals  of  every 
kind  perished  from  cold  and  starvation.  The  Indians 
of  Washoe  suffered  greatly,  and  many  of  them  perished. 
Flour  was  worth  seventy-five  cents  a  pound,  and  hardly 
anything  eatable  was  any  cheaper. 

Some  were  glad  to  get  away  in  the  spring  of  1860, 
abandoning  their  claims  as  not  worth  such  a  struggle, 
but  the  great  majority  were  wild  with  the  passion  for 
sudden  riches.  The  small  backward  eddy  was  met  by 
the  vanguard  of  a  still  vaster  army.  Long  before  the 
snow  was  sufficiently  melted  to  render  the  passage  of 
the  Sierras  entirely  safe,  multitudes  were  forcing  their 
way  across. 

The  severity  of  the  winter  of  1859-'60  had  caused 
such  high  prices  at  the  new  camp  that  every  effort  was 
made  to  get  goods  in  early.  Before  the  end  of  February 
mules  laden  with  supplies  were  led  for  miles  on  blank- 
ets spread  over  the  snow  to  prevent  them  from  sinking. 
The  journey  at  that  season  was  like  crossing  the  Alps 
in  midwinter.  Forgotten  heroes  of  the  long  battle  of 
the  frontiersman  with  the  wilderness  toiled  on  and 
up,  over  the  ice  and  snow  of  the  Sierra  passes,  seven 
and  eight  thousand  feet  above  the  sea.  A  hundred 
and  sixty-two  miles  was  the  entire  distance  from  Sacra- 
mento by  Placerville,  the  main  route,  but  forty  miles 
of  this  was  comparatively  easy.  Then  the  ascent  began, 
first  in  the  warmer  foothills,  but  very  soon  in  slush  and 
snow.  Saddle  trains  were  started  for  passengers  before 
any  vehicle  could  get  over  the  passes,  where  the  snow  in 
some  places  lay  fifty  or  sixty  feet  deep.  Sleighs  were 
tried,  but  the  deeper  drifts  alternated  with  bare,  wind- 
swept rocks.  At  the  earliest  possible  moment  stages 
began  to  run,  some  by  Truckee,  others  by  Placerville. 

The  advance  guard  of  the  army  of  prospectors 
5 


52  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

and  speculators  reached  Placerville  to  find  further 
movement  prevented  by  a  snow  blockade.  Hundreds 
of  tons  of  freight  lay  on  the  hillside,  though  a  dollar 
a  pound  was  freely  offered  to  any  one  who  would  get 
it  over  the  mountains.  More  freight  was  surging  night 
and  day  toward  the  congested  streets  of  Placerville. 
The  steamers  from  San  Francisco  to  Sacramento  were 
"reeling  under  loads  of  Washoe  freight,"  to  quote 
from  a  correspondent  of  the  San  Francisco  Bulletin 
in  March;  their  deck  loads  consisted  of  sprawling 
figures  discussing  the  Washoe  Mecca  in  a  dozen  differ- 
ent tongues.  Merchants  closed  their  stores;  clerks 
left  their  desks  and  teachers  their  schools;  sailors 
slipped  overboard  and  swam  ashore  to  join  the  silver 
seekers;  mechanics  threw  down  their  tools,  and  farmers 
abandoned  their  fertile  ranches  in  the  broad  Cali- 
fornia valleys.  Bars  of  white  bullion,  the  first  silver 
from  Washoe,  were  piled  in  bank  windows,  or  followed 
by  admiring  crowds  through  the  streets,  arousing  and 
increasing  public  interest. 

One  shrewd  trader  named  Moore  came  to  the  front. 
Having  a  few  dollars  to  invest,  he  left  San  Francisco 
March  9th  with  two  hundred  pairs  of  blankets  costing 
two  dollars  a  pair,  twenty  dozen  tin  plates  costing 
twenty-two  cents  a  dozen,  and  a  large  assortment  of 
liquors.  He  managed  in  some  way  to  obtain  pack 
mules,  so  that  he  reached  Virginia  City  on  the  last  day 
of  March  and  sold  two  hundred  dollars'  worth  of  drinks 
before  nightfall.  Forty  men  paid  him  a  dollar  apiece 
per  night  for  the  use  of  blankets  and  space  enough  in 
his  tent  to  sleep  in.  Moore  refused  eight  thousand  dol- 
lars for  his  goods,  which  had  cost  him  less  than  one  fifth 
as  much.  The  next  trader  to  cross  the  mountains  re- 
tailed some  shovels  for  nine  dollars  apiece. 

A  letter  written  April  5,  1860,  to  the  Mountain 


THE  RUSH  ACROSS  THE  SIERRAS.  53 

Democrat,  of  Placerville,  describes  most  vividly  the 
condition  of  things  as  they  appeared  to  one  of  the  first 
arrivals  of  the  season  who  had  fought  his  way  over  early 
in  March,  even  before  the  arrival  of  the  Moore  party. 
"  There  are  few  houses  in  Carson  Valley/'  the  pros- 
pector writes.  "  I  have  seen  only  about  one  acre  of 
ploughed  land."  He  describes  the  "  Washoe  zephyrs  " 
that  blew  day  and  night  from  the  snow  peaks,  and  adds 
that  there  was  a  foot  of  snow  on  the  ground  and  a  snow- 
storm in  progress.  At  the  time  of  writing,  lumber 
"  was  selling  for  four  hundred  dollars  per  thousand." 
Eight  or  ten  small  buildings  were  being  put  up.  Can- 
vas, boulders,  and  dried  hides  were  used  to  save  lumber. 
The  business  of  the  town  appeared  to  be  "  eating, 
sleeping,  drinking,  and  gambling."  "Wages  were  five 
dollars  a  day,  but  meals  and  shelter  cost  four  dollars. 
Though  many  men  were  said  to  be  millionaires,  it  was 
merely  by  reason  of  estimates  of  the  value  of  their 
claims. 

This  was  probably  a  very  truthful  statement  of 
the  condition  of  affairs  in  the  spring  of  1860,  but  wildly 
exaggerated  statements  had  gone  abroad,  as  in  all  min- 
ing excitements,  in  which  most  persons  appear  to  en- 
tirely lose  the  power  of  distinguishing  truth  from 
falsehood.  It  was  commonly  believed  in  San  Fran- 
cisco that  many  and  large  arrastras  and  quartz  mills 
were  turning  out  tons  of  bullion,  when  in  fact  all  that 
the  miners  could  do  in  that  line  in  the  fall  of  1859  was 
to  build  a  few  small  mule-power  and  two  water-power 
arrastras  on  the  Carson  River  that  pulverized  two  or 
three  tons  of  rock  a  day.  The  loose,  decomposed  sur- 
face rock  was  exhausted. 

This  was  the  time  when  the  old  crowd  rejoiced 
audibly  that  they  had  sold  out  before  the  new  diggings 
were  exhausted.  Alvah  Gould,  who  sold  his  half  in- 


54  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

terest  in  the  "  Gould  and  Curry "  for  four  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars,  and  twenty  years  later  was  keeping 
a  peanut  stand  at  Reno,  went  galloping  down  Gold 
Canon  immediately  after  the  sale,  shouting,  "  I've  got 
away  with  the  Calif  ornians!  "  The  whole  country  was 
crossed  by  such  a  network  of  quartz  ledges  that  very 
few  persons  looked  upon  the  Comstock  group  of  claims 
as  any  more  valuable  than  hundreds  of  others. 

The  picturesque  features  of  this  great  affair,  the 
famous  rush  of  1860,  have  never  been  more  pleasantly 
illustrated  than  by  a  series  of  papers  entitled  "  A  Peep 
at  Washoe,"  which  first  appeared  in  Harper's  Magazine. 
Written  by  that  genial  and  accomplished  Californian, 
the  late  J.  Eoss  Browne,  they  abound  in  unfailing 
humour  and  clear-cut  common  sense.  No  writer  of  the 
time  better  knew  how  to  use  his  material,  and  he  had 
the  spirit  of  an  almost  ideal  newspaper  reporter.  He 
went  to  Washoe  among  the  earlier  pilgrims,  "  roughed 
it "  in  a  truly  refreshing  manner,  and  reproduced  with 
pen  and  pencil  exactly  the  essential  elements  of  the 
scene. 

Ross  Browne,  as  every  one  called  him,  reached 
Placerville  by  stage  from  Sacramento  with  "  two  pair 
of  blankets,  one  extra  shirt,  a  plug  of  tobacco,  a  note 
book,  and  a  paint  box."  The  roads  beyond  Placerville 
were  so  bad  that  the  stages  had  just  been  taken  off. 
The  town  was  therefore  full  of  pilgrims  anxious  to 
cross  the  mountains,  and  "  practising  for  Washoe  "  in 
the  saloons  and  gambling  places.  Every  sign  bore 
"Washoe"  in  large  letters.  Pack  trains  were  start- 
ing daily  for  the  mines.  The  livery  stables  had  their 
horses  and  mules  engaged  a  week  in  advance.  The 
town  was  full  to  overflowing.  Men  who  could  not  get 
beds  slept  on  the  floor.  There  was  nothing  but  Washoe 
to  be  thought  of  or  heard  of;  Smith  "  had  made  ten 


THE  RUSH  ACROSS  THE  SIERRAS.  55 

thousand  dollars  there  at  a  single  trade "  ;  Jones 
"  had  found  a  twenty-thousand-dollar  mine  "  the  day 
he  arrived;  and  Kobinson's  canvas  hotel  was  "worth 
forty  thousand  to  him."  Browne  revelled  a  while  in  all 
this  tumult;  then,  finding  it  impossible  to  obtain  any- 
thing to  ride,  he  joined  a  party  of  four  who  were  start- 
ing on  foot.  They  filed  along  the  ravine  that  formed 
the  main  street  of  Placerville,  with  their  blankets 
and  provisions  strapped  on  their  backs;  the  crowd 
shouted  "  Go  it,  Washoe! "  and  they  departed  up  the 
grade  toward  "  Strawberry  Flat." 

It  was  April,  and  the  track  was  furrowed  with  dis- 
aster. Broken  wagon-tongues  protruded  from  the  mud. 
"  Loads  of  dry  goods  and  whisky  barrels  lay  wallowing 
in  the  general  wreck  of  matter."  Along  the  worst 
parts  of  the  canons  whole  trains  of  pack  animals 
"struggled  frantically  to  make  the  transit  from  one 
dry  spot  to  another,"  or  rolled  headlong  to  the  bottom 
of  the  gulch.  The  cries  and  maledictions  of  the  Mexi- 
can vaqueros  were  terrific.  Browne  makes  a  faint  at- 
tempt to  describe  it  as  follows:  "  Carambo!  Caraja! 
Sacramento!  Santa  Maria!  Diavolo! " 

Nightfall  overtook  the  five  wayfarers  at  "Dirty 
Mike's,"  a  shanty  with  a  bar  and  a  public  bedroom, 
where  they  spread  their  blankets.  The  furniture  con- 
sisted of  a  piece  of  looking-glass  on  the  window  frame, 
and  the  public  comb  hanging  by  a  string  from  the 
doorpost.  Supper  consisted  of  coffee,  beans,  and  pota- 
toes. The  plates,  like  the  landlord,  had  seldom  seen 
water. 

As  the  travellers  proceeded  on  their  way  the  next 
morning  they  were  more  and  more  impressed  by  the 
unique  features  of  the  great  rush  of  which  they  formed 
a  part.  "  Taverns  of  dry-goods  boxes  and  old  potato 
sacks,"  board-and-lodging  signs  over  tents  scarce  ten 


56  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

feet  square,  saloons  where  the  whisky  barrel  set  in  the 
shade  of  a  pine  tree  formed  the  bar — such  were  com- 
mon scenes  along  the  road.  They  were  never  out  of 
sight  of  pilgrims — Irishmen  with  wheelbarrows; 
American,  French,  and  German  miners  with  tools  and 
heavy  packs;  Mexicans  with  burros;  gamblers  and 
confidence  men  on  valuable  thoroughbreds;  Missouri- 
ans  struggling  through  the  mud  with  their  families 
and  household  goods  in  lumber  wagons;  drovers 
with  hogs  and  cattle;  organ  grinders,  Jew  peddlers, 
"  professors  "  with  divining  rods  and  electric  "  silver 
detectors "  ;  women,  even,  dressed  in  men's  cloth- 
ing and  usually  under  some  gambler's  protection.  One 
saw  youth  and  strength,  illness  and  old  age,  cripples 
and  hunchbacks- — "  all  stark  mad  for  silver."  Weather- 
beaten,  footsore,  a  counter-current  of  defeated,  heart- 
broken men  who  had  already  seen  too  much  of  Washoe 
went  slowly  past,  but  none  of  the  silver  hunters  paused. 
A  few  among  the  returning  crowd  looked  prosperous, 
and  tried  to  sell  shares  of  stock  in  various  Washoe 
mines  to  the  newcomers.  One  of  them  was  positively 
happy.  He  had  taken  a  grindstone  to  the  Comstock 
the  previous  autumn  and  made  thirty  dollars  a  day, 
as  long  as  the  stone  lasted,  grinding  tools.  Now  it  had 
worn  to  the  middle,  and  he  was  on  his  way  to  Placer- 
ville  to  buy  another. 

Before  dark  three  of  the  party  had  gone  ahead  of 
Mr.  Browne,  and  one  lagged  in  the  rear  nearly  ex- 
hausted. Poor  Browne  pushed  on  to  Strawberry  Flat, 
about  forty-five  miles  from  Placerville,  with  a  solution 
of  paints  and  tobacco  running  down  his  legs  as  he 
walked  through  a  driving  rain.  The  famous  "  Straw- 
berry Hotel "  was  a  large  log  house,  with  every  room 
and  shed  crammed  full  of  treasure  seekers.  A  door 
opened,  the  fortunate  ones  hurled  themselves  into 


THE  RUSH  ACROSS  THE  SIERRAS.  57 

the  dining  room,  filled  it,  ate  ravenously,  and  were 
driven  out  like  cattle  to  give  place  to  an  equally  hungry 
horde.  Eight  or  ten  times  this  process  was  repeated, 
and  by  the  time  Mr.  Browne  had  taken  his  turn  in  this 
melee  the  "  general  bedroom  "  was  filled  by  some  three 
hundred  tired  wayfarers.  Forty  or  fifty  remaining 
pilgrims  occupied  a  room  about  eighteen  feet  square. 
In  the  morning  Mr.  Browne  found  that  his  stockings 
had  been  stolen,  a  very  serious  loss  when  one  was  about 
to  climb  the  Sierras. 

The  third  day  was  wasted  in  a  futile  attempt  to 
reach  Lake  Valley,  and  the  fourth  day's  experience 
was  even  harder  than  its  predecessors.  The  poor 
pedestrian,  carrying  thirty  pounds  or  so,  slid,  slipped, 
rolled,  and  climbed  along  the  winding  trail,  which 
"  was  perfectly  honeycombed  with  holes."  Lake  Val- 
ley station  was  reached  (Lake  Tahoe)  through  the 
process  of  sliding  down  sections  of  the  grade.  Accom- 
modations here  were  so  poor  that  Browne  decided  to 
push  on  to  Hope  Valley,  four  miles  distant.  The  weary 
traveller  found  the  deepest  and  most  adhesive  of  moist 
clay,  but  overtook  three  more  pilgrims,  and  they  tried 
to  find  shelter  in  the  cabin  of  "  Diogenes,"  as  they 
named  the  only  settler  in  the  valley,  a  rough  customer 
who  sat  on  a  pile  of  fox  skins  just  inside  his  door  hold- 
ing a  savage  bulldog.  Diogenes  wanted  no  company, 
would  sell  nothing,  and  did  not  care  if  any  number 
of  Washoe  tramps  died  on  his  doorsteps.  The  dis- 
couraged quartette  went  on  to  Woodford's,  six  miles 
farther,  in  the  face  of  blinding  sleet  and  a  terrific  wind. 
This  station,  a  log  cabin,  was  on  the  Utah  line,  and, 
as  everywhere  else,  several  hundred  people  were  try- 
ing to  get  a  little  food  and  sleep. 

The  fifth  day  brought  the  traveller  into  the  desolate 
sands  of  Carson  Valley,  where  his  feet  were  so  blistered 


58  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

that  he  made  only  fifteen  miles  by  sunset.  Finally  he 
felt  unable  to  take  another  step,  when  he  perceived 
a  hot  spring  close  by,  toward  which  he  crept.  Finding 
the  water  saline,  he  bathed  his  feet,  and  was  soon  able 
to  resume  his  journey. 

The  sixth  day  our  hero  proceeded  by  slow  degrees 
to  Carson  City,  and  took  the  stage  a  few  days  later  to 
the  mines,  eighteen  miles  distant. 

A  few  weeks  later,  broken  down  by  overwork  and 
exposure  and  poisoned  by  bad  water,  he  started  back 
across  the  mountains.  Another  snowstorm  had  blocked 
up  all  the  trails,  and  he  was  compelled  to  walk  most  of 
the  way.  "A  perfect  torrent  of  adventurers"  was 
pouring  over,  forming  an  almost  unbroken  line  "  from 
Placerville  to  Carson  City."  He  thought  that  almost 
the  whole  State  of  California  was  on  the  move  to  storm 
the  Washoe  mines.  In  vain  he  expostulated  with  pros- 
pectors, and  said  that  though  there  were  already  eight 
or  ten  thousand  people  in  Virginia  City,  not  one  man 
in  fifty  had  either  mines  or  work.  Every  one  laughed 
and  pushed  ahead,  determined  to  see  the  elephant 
for  himself. 

I  have  told  Eoss  Browne's  experiences  in  my  own 
way  and  with  considerable  detail,  because  they  appear 
to  me  typical,  though  much  less  severe  than  those 
which  fell  to  the  lot  of  many  of  the  passionate  pilgrims 
who  were  so  wild  to  reach  Washoe.  The  judicious 
reader  will  be  able  to  infer  that  the  settlement  of  an 
isolated  mining  district  sometimes  involves  desperately 
hard  work  and  reckless  expenditure  of  energy.  The 
fact  is,  no  one  who  has  not  seen  it  is  able  to  fully  con- 
ceive of  the  nature  of  the  struggle  that  goes  on  cease- 
lessly, remorselessly,  in  such  epochs  as  the  one  under 
consideration.  This  very  summer  the  rush  to  Alaska 
left  hundreds  of  penniless  wretches,  who  were  totally 


THE  RUSH  ACROSS  THE  SIERRAS.  59 

ignorant  of  pioneering  work,  in  starving  groups  along 
the  sea-coast,  and  they  were  gathered  up  by  various 
relief  expeditions. 

In  the  midst  of  the  excitement,  while  Virginia 
City  was  growing  like  a  mushroom,  the  news  of  an  In- 
dian massacre  was  brought  to  the  camp.  The  story 
was  that  the  Piutes  had  attacked  a  stage  station  twenty 
miles  away,  had  killed  the  men  who  kept  it,  and  had 
burned  the  cabins.  It  was  really  some  young  men  of 
the  Bannock  tribe  who,  aroused  by  terrible  outrages, 
had  killed  the  guilty  men;  but  a  company  of  one  hun- 
dred and  five  volunteers  from  the  mining  camps  started 
hastily  for  the  main  Piute  settlement  at  Pyramid  Lake 
to  "  teach  the  scoundrels  a  lesson."  In  the  battle  which 
followed,  the  whites  suffered  one  of  the  most  complete 
defeats  on  record.  More  than  half  were  killed,  and 
the  scattered  fugitives  fled  back  to  the  towns,  saying 
that  the  Piutes  were  coming  with  five  thousand  war- 
riors. The  excitement  in  Virginia  City  was  tremen- 
dous. Martial  law  was  declared.  A  rude  fort  was  built 
for  the  women  and  children.  Water  pipes  were  melted 
into  bullets.  Watchmen  were  placed  on  the  hilltops. 
A  cry  for  help  was  sent  across  the  mountains,  and  the 
California  militia  and  regulars  soon  marched  against 
the  Indians,  who  were  defeated  and  driven  into  the 
desert.  It  is  the  opinion  of  most  students  of  the  affair 
that  the  trouble  was  entirely  unnecessary,  but  from  a 
purely  literary  point  of  view  it  seems  to  belong  exactly 
where  it  happened — in  the  midst  of  the  great  "  Washoe 
rush." 

Twenty  thousand  people  went  to  Washoe  in  a  few 
months,  and  half  of  them  remained  there.  Other 
thousands  followed  and  scattered  out  to  new  camps, 
until  the  movement  inaugurated  by  Judge  Walsh  when 
he  saddled  his  mule  at  midnight  and  slipped  out  of 


60  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Grass  Valley,  bound  for  the  new  silver  camp,  became 
the  definite  settlement  of  a  new  State.  Among  the 
Californians  who  came  early  were  James  G.  Fair  and 
John  W.  Mackay,  unnoted  in  the  throng.  There  were 
to  be  many  successive  dynasties  of  "  kings  of  the  Corn- 
stock  "  before  the  names  of  either  of  them  should  be 
heard  abroad. 

Through  1861  and  1862  the  rapid  transfer  of  men 
and  money  to  Nevada  continued,  but  splendid  moun- 
tain highways  were  constructed  by  that  time,  and  the 
story  of  the  Comstock  was  presenting  new  elements 
of  surprise.  The  real  romance  and  heroism  of  the 
episode  belongs,  as  in  California,  to  the  first  two  seasons 
after  the  rush  began.  The  years  1859  and  1860  in 
Nevada  history  correspond  to  the  years  1849  and  1850 
in  California  history.  Both  periods  alike  witnessed 
a  marvellous  movement  into  the  wilderness — one  for 
gold,  the  other  for  silver.  The  social  and  financial 
relations  of  the  two  communities — one  west  of  the 
Sierras,  the  other  east — have  been  very  close  at  all 
times,  but  the  people  of  Nevada  soon  developed  char- 
acteristics of  their  own.  A  Californian,  after  dwelling 
a  decade  or  two  in  the  sage  brush  and  desert,  became 
a  Nevadan,  much  as  the  Virginian  of  the  last  century 
who  crossed  the  Alleghanies  into  the  land  beyond 
became,  in  the  course  of  a  generation,  a  Kentuckian. 


CHAPTEE  IX. 

OLD  TIMES  IN  VIRGINIA  CITY. 

IN  a  new  mining  camp  all  things  start  at  once  into 
feverish  activity.  Mines  must  be  opened,  mills  built, 
roads  and  telegraph  lines  constructed,  towns  created 
and  supplied.  Prospectors  are  at  work;  speculators 
are  buying  and  selling.  New  industries  of  every  con- 
ceivable description  are  springing  into  existence. 
Nothing  is  considered  done  for  "  good  and  all."  With- 
in a  month  after  a  building  is  roofed  over  it  may  be  torn 
down  so  that  a  larger  one  can  take  its  place.  All  these 
things  are  simultaneous  to  a  degree  that  no  narrative 
can  hope  to  rival.  Though  scattered  into  chapters 
for  the  sake  of  convenience,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  the  story  of  the  first  busy  year  or  so  in  the  Corn- 
stock  towns  is  in  reality  but  one  great  event — one  min- 
gled picture  of  pioneers,  prospectors,  speculators,  town 
builders,  underground  miners,  silhouetted  against 
Mount  Davidson. 

When  the  "  surface  diggings  "  began  to  pay  in  the 
spring  of  1859  the  first  effort  of  the  miners,  as  in 
nearly  every  case  on  record,  was  to  organize  in  some 
rude,  simple  manner  for  the  better  protection  of  life 
and  property.  In  a  historical  sense,  this  was  a  mingling 
of  the  two  currents  of  political  development — the  un- 
satisfied desire  of  the  settlers  of  Western  Utah  for  a 
separate  territorial  government,  and  the  transplanted 
system  of  camp  "  rules,  usages,  and  customs  "  that  had 

61 


62  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

been  created  a  decade  before  in  California.  A  few 
ranchers  in  Honey  Lake  Valley  had  already  organized 
the  "  Territory  of  Nataqua,"  which  finally  led  to  the 
"  Sage  Brush  Rebellion  "  of  1862.  A  larger  group  of 
ranchers  in  Carson  and  Eagle  Valleys  were  taking  steps 
for  the  formation  of  a  provisional  government  for  the 
proposed  "  Territory  of  Nevada."  Meanwhile  the  men 
of  the  new  camps  were  not  only  sending  delegates  to 
the  ranchers'  convention,  but  were  adopting  local  regu- 
lations. 

On  June  llth,  at  Gold  Hill,  a  miners'  meeting 
made  the  following  rules:  That  no  Chinaman  should 
ever  hold  a  claim  in  the  district;  that  all  "  banking 
games "  should  be  prohibited  and  professional  gam- 
blers banished;  that  theft  or  robbery  is  to  be  punished 
by  stripes  or  banishment,  as  the  jury  may  determine; 
that  the  penalties  for  assault  and  battery  or  "wilful 
wounding  "  should  be  fixed  in  the  same  manner;  and, 
lastly,  that  murderers  should  be  hung.  Gold  Hill  had 
had  one  homicide  in  April,  when  the  first  house  was 
being  built,  two  of  the  miners  having  quarrelled  in 
a  game  of  cards,  and  the  survivor  was  on  trial  at  Car- 
son City  at  the  time  of  this  miners'  meeting.  The 
affair  caused  the  adoption  of  a  mild  regulation  against 
"  exhibiting  deadly  weapons."  To  prohibit  carrying 
them  was  evidently  a  refinement  of  law  entirely  beyond 
the  pioneers. 

Nearly  all  the  miners  did  their  own  cooking,  but 
as  slapjacks,  beans,  bacon,  and  coffee  constituted  the 
usual  programme,  their  task  was  not  very  difficult. 
Hotels  and  restaurants,  such  as  they  were,  charged  too 
much,  and  so  the  newcomers  secured  some  kind  of 
shelter  and  the  regulation  coffeepot  and  frying  pan 
as  soon  as  possible.  Blankets  were  of  primary  impor- 
tance. Picturesque  costumes  and  a  general  air  of  being 


OLD  TIMES  IN  VIRGINIA  CITY.  63 

engaged  in  a  summer  outing  have  existed  only  in  the 
minds  of  romantic  writers  and  artists  of  mining  camps. 
Coarse,  cheap  clothing,  dirt  and  rags,  are  really  the 
salient  features.  The  Comstock  miners  were  com- 
pelled to  do  their  own  mending  and  patching  as  long 
as  flour  sacks  lasted,  and  as  leather  belts  were  generally 
worn,  buttons  were  never  of  much  importance. 

For  some  months  the  only  way  to  carry  goods  to 
Virginia  City  was  on  mule-back,  and  the  few  boards 
in  the  camp  were  taken  there  in  this  manner  from 
Washoe  and  Genoa  sawmills.  Firewood  was  scarce 
and  costly.  The  nut-pine  trees  were  soon  cut  down; 
Indians  grubbed  up  the  roots  and  sold  them  to  the 
miners.  Sage  brush  was  burned  a  good  deal,  but  still 
many  people  were  not  able  to  afford  the  luxury  of  a 
fire  except  for  cooking.  Tunnels,  run  into  the  hills 
and  widened  into  one  or  two  rooms,  became  very  popu- 
lar for  winter  residences.  Some  miners  cooked  in  a 
brush  hut  outside;  others  cut  a  shaft  for  a  stovepipe, 
and  the  hillside  sometimes  smoked  as  if  a  dozen  small 
volcanoes  were  in  active  operation.  One  large  cave  ac- 
commodated twelve  or  fifteen  men.  A  Scotchman  near 
Silver  City  made  quite  an  underground  dwelling  in  a 
hill  of  rock.  He  was  widely  known  as  the  "Nevada 
Hermit,"  and  passed  most  of  his  time  reading  in  a 
library  of  several  hundred  volumes,  which  occupied 
one  of  the  rock-hewn  chambers.  Sunday  afternoons 
he  used  to  receive  visitors  and  read  sermons  to  them. 

Virginia  City,  however  much  it  needed  sermons, 
got  none  in  those  days.  The  shapeless  town,  crossed 
at  various  angles  by  three  straggling  lanes,  had  no 
social  life  except  in  the  saloons  and  gambling  houses. 
Cheerful,  well-lighted,  full  of  excitement,  these  were 
the  real  homes  of  the  miners.  Gold  and  silver  were 
stacked  up  on  the  monte  tables;  dice  rattled  and  cards 


64:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

were  shuffled  all  day  and  all  night.  The  ragged,  greasy, 
dirt-covered  multitude  filled  the  saloons  with  loud 
talk  and  laughter,  except  when  a  pistol-shot  rang  out 
sharply  and  the  crowd  swayed  into  the  street.  Lyman 
Jones's  canvas  hotel,  eighteen  feet  wide  and  forty  feet 
long,  was  one  of  the  first  of  these  saloons.  The  "  bar  " 
consisted  of  an  old  sluice  box  and  the  bar  fixtures  were 
a  pitcher  and  a  dozen  tin  cups.  Another  bar  was  made 
of  the  side  of  a  wagon  box,  carried  up  the  gulch  on 
mule-back. 

"Winter  weather  in  Virginia  City,  or  rather  the 
extent  and  variety  of  it,  considerably  astonished  the 
newcomers  of  '59,  and  was  even  a  surprise  to  those  old- 
timers  who  had  been  living  in  the  more  sheltered  ra- 
vines. Some  kinds  of  the  weather  were  much  worse 
than  other  kinds,  but  all  were  execrable.  One  writer 
remarked  that  "Washoe  has  no  climate  of  its  own." 
All  it  has  "  is  blown  over  the  Sierras  from  California 
and  comes  in  fragments."  Several  avalanches  OC" 
curred  after  thaws  in  the  winter.  Some  miners  were 
dug  out  with  difficulty,  and  one  or  two  persons  lost 
their  lives. 

None  of  these  things  were  so  terrifying  to  the 
pioneers  as  the  gales,  or  "Washoe  zephyrs"  which 
plunge  furiously  downward  from  the  crests  of  the  snow 
peaks  and  sweep  in  wild  eddies  and  whirlwinds  of  ter- 
rific force  about  Mount  Davidson.  A  man's  hat  is 
sometimes  carried  from  his  head,  lifted  a  hundred  feet 
vertically,  and  then  dropped,  a  twisted  mass,  at  his 
feet.  Such  a  wind  rips  boards,  shingles,  and  sheets 
of  tin  from  buildings,  tumbles  stovepipes  and  chimney 
pots  down  the  gulches,  and  fills  the  air  with  flying 
gravel.  When  the  miners  founded  Virginia  City  they 
knew  little  or  nothing  about  the  zephyrs,  and  nearly 
every  shanty,  tent,  and  hut  was  blown  out  of  sight  after 


OLD  TIMES  IN  VIRGINIA  CITY.  65 

a  few  gales.  Two  of  the  first  churches  built  were 
blown  flat.  Tradition  relates  that  during  those  early 
gales  the  air  was  filled  with  rags,  empty  cans,  bottles, 
crowbars,  pickaxes,  cooking  stoves,  cats,  and  Indian 
babies.  One  veracious  chronicler  says  that  a  donkey 
was  once  caught  up  from  where  he  was  grazing  on  the 
side  of  Mount  Davidson  and  blown  eastward  over  Vir- 
ginia City  at  the  height  of  six  hundred  feet  above 
the  town,  finally  landing  at  Sugar  Loaf  Mountain, 
several  miles  away.  The  eyewitnesses  aver  that  as  the 
poor  beast,  was  hurried  over  his  master's  cabin  "his 
neck  was  stretched  out  to  its  greatest  length,  and  he 
was  shrieking  in  the  most  despairing  and  heartrending 
tones  ever  heard  from  any  living  creature." 

In  the  spring  of  1860,  when  excitement  was  fairly 
boiling  over,  a  visitor  wrote  the  following  terse  de- 
scription of  the  "  wondrous  city  of  Virginia,"  and  noth- 
ing could  better  serve  to  sum  up  its  appearance: 
"  Frame  shanties  pitched  together  as  if  by  accident; 
tents  of  canvas,  of  blankets,  of  brush,  of  potato  sacks, 
and  old  shirts,  with  empty  whisky  barrels  for  chim- 
neys; smoking  hovels  of  mud  and  stone;  coyote  holes 
in  the  hillsides  forcibly  seized  by  men;  pits  and  shanties 
with  smoke  issuing  from  every  crevice;  piles  of  goods 
and  rubbish  on  craggy  points,  in  the  hollows,  on  the 
rocks,  in  the  mud,  on  the  snow — everywhere — scat- 
tered broadcast  in  pell-mell  confusion,  as  if  the  clouds 
had  suddenly  burst  overhead  and  rained  down  the  dregs 
of  all  the  flimsy,  rickety,  filthy  little  hovels  and  rubbish 
of  merchandise  that  had  ever  undergone  the  process  of 
evaporation  from  the  earth  since  the  days  of  Noah. 
The  intervals  of  space,  which  may  or  may  not  have 
been  streets,  were  dotted  over  with  human  beings  of 
such  sort,  variety,  and  numbers  that  the  famous  ant- 
hills of  Africa  were  as  nothing  in  comparison.  To 


66  THE  STORY  OF  THE   MINE. 

say  that  they  were  rough,  muddy,  unkempt,  and  un- 
washed would  be  but  faintly  expressive  of  their  actual 
appearance;  they  seemed  to  have  caught  the  diabolical 
tint  and  grime  of  the  whole  place." 

Few  mining  camps  have  been  so  utterly  neglected 
by  the  civil  authorities  as  was  Washoe.  The  people 
kept  appealing  to  Congress  to  set  them  apart  in  a  new 
territory,  or  join  them  to  California.  Lawbreakers 
soon  drifted  in,  and  the  miners'  honest  efforts  to  pre- 
serve law  and  order  became  of  little  value  in  the  wild 
scramble.  Parasites  and  desperadoes,  the  classes  that 
curse  every  prosperous  camp,  were  often  among  the 
first  that  arrived.  The  miners'  courts,  as  a  rule,  paid 
more  attention  to  offences  against  property  than  to 
those  against  life.  Two  of  the  early  thieves  were  tried 
under  a  pine  tree;  each  had  an  ear  cut  off,  and  the  men 
were  driven  out  of  the  district.  But  there  was  no  law 
for  the  bullies,  the  "  Big  Chiefs  "  as  they  were  called, 
who  terrorized  the  busy  town.  As  Mr.  Eliot  Lord  says 
in  his  graphic  book,  Comstock  Mines  and  Miners: 
"  They  lolled  on  gambling  tables  and  the  bars  of  sa- 
loons, and  swaggered  about  the  city  at  all  hours  of  the 
day  and  night." 

Every  one  has  heard  of  the  "  Tombstone  Terror  " 
and  the  "  Bad  Man  from  Bodie."  The  type  has  grad- 
ually become  semi-humorous;  an  alliterative  Terror  is 
robbed  of  half  his  dreadfulness,  and  becomes  a  cheap, 
theatrical,  amusing  villain.  Not  so  in  the  old  Com- 
stock days  of  "  Big  Chiefs,"  the  most  of  whom  were 
plain  and  prosaic  scoundrels  too  long  unhung.  One, 
Sam  Brown — heavy-voiced,  burly,  insolent — had  killed 
thirteen  men  in  Texas  and  California  before  he  reached 
Washoe.  He  kept  a  station  on  the  Humboldt  for  a  time, 
and  once  when  a  traveller  desired  something  to  eat, 
Brown  pointed  to  a  piece  of  bacon.  The  traveller  having 


OLD  TIMES  IN  VIRGINIA  CITY.  67 

no  knife,  asked  for  one.  Brown  pulled  out  an  immense 
bowie,  then  thrust  it  forward  with  the  remark  that  he 
had  "already  killed  five  men  with  that  knife/'  and 
the  startled  visitor  fled  in  haste. 

Brown  on  one  occasion  in  Virginia  City  took  offence 
at  some  remark  made  by  a  poor  half-witted  fellow. 
Without  a  word  he  seized  his  prey  and  slashed  him  to 
pieces  with  the  terrible  bowie.  Then  he  lay  down  on  the 
billiard  table  and  went  to  sleep  while  the  remains  of  the 
victim  were  being  gathered  up  from  the  floor.  This 
incident  and  several  others  quite  as  bad  are  well  au- 
thenticated in  the  history  of  the  rampant  ruffianism 
and  crime  of  the  period.  Sam  Brown's  long  list  of 
murders  came  to  a  sudden  end  when  a  plucky  rancher 
whom  he  had  threatened  to  kill  on  sight  filled  him  full 
of  buckshot. 

A  few  "  gentlemanly  cutthroats  "  of  rather  more 
prepossessing  appearance  were  occasionally  found — men 
like  Cherokee  Bob,  of  Oregon  and  Idaho,  the  undoubted 
original  of  Bret  Harte's  Jack  Hamlin.  One  of  these, 
"  El  Dorado  Johnny,"  desiring  to  shoot  a  man,  bought 
a  new  suit  of  clothes,  got  shaved,  had  his  hair  curled 
and  his  boots  polished,  saying  that  he  might  be  "  used 
up  "  and  desired  to  "  look  nice  if  he  was  killed,"  which 
was  exactly  what  occurred. 

As  Virginia  City,  Gold  Hill,  Silver  City,  and  other 
towns  grew  in  size  and  wealth,  thieves,  rowdies,  and 
footpads  appeared  to  increase  in  numbers  faster  than 
the  respectable,  hard-working  portion  of  the  communi- 
ty. After  a  while  robberies  were  of  almost  daily  occur- 
rence. A  good  many  murders  are  supposed  to  have 
been  committed  during  the  reign  of  this  lawlessness 
and  when  the  country  was  full  of  strangers.  Still,  there 
never  was  anything  like  the  amount  and  degree  of  out- 
lawry in  Nevada  that  there  was  at  a  later  period  in  Mon- 
6 


68  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

tana,  where  the  evil  characters  of  the  whole  Pacific 
coast  gathered,  and  went  down  at  last  before  the  stern 
justice  of  the  vigilantes  of  the  Rockies. 

Before  the  close  of  1860,  as  already  sufficiently  in- 
dicated, Virginia  City  had  all  the  vices  of  large  mining 
camps.  "Women  of  nameless  reputations  paraded  the 
streets  in  gay  attire  and  jewellery.  The  Sacramento 
Union  sent  a  correspondent  to  the  mines  in  September, 
who  drew  especial  attention  to  the  cosmopolitan  char- 
acter of  the  place — Italians,  Frenchmen,  Germans, 
Mexicans;  each  class  was  so  well  represented  that  all 
had  favourite  resorts.  The  first  theatre  was  opened 
September  29th  by  a  travelling  company  from  Salt 
Lake  that  played  Toodles  and  Swiss  Swains  and  won  a 
mighty  reward  in  hard  cash.  Wandering  barn-stormers 
were  probably  never  more  surprised  at  their  reception. 

Let  us  turn  to  another  side  of  the  picture.  Heroes 
and  lovers  of  humanity  were  in  the  camp,  toiling  to 
organize  schools  and  churches  and  to  create  a  civilized 
social  life.  All  the  leading  religious  denominations 
were  soon  represented,  and  some  had  small  churches 
within  a  year  or  two.  Noble  Father  Manogue,  himself 
a  miner  in  his  youth  and  a  man  of  endless  pluck  and 
zeal,  did  a  marvellous  work  among  the  rough  characters 
of  the  frontier.  A  Methodist,  Rev.  Jesse  L.  Bennett, 
preached  the  first  sermon  ever  heard  on  the  Comstock. 
It  was  delivered  on  the  corner  of  C  Street,  and  when 
the  hat  was  passed  after  the  services  it  came  back 
"  nearly  filled  with  gold  and  silver." 

Pioneer  Comstock  reminiscences  are  crowded  with 
Piute  stories.  The  Indians  were  good-natured,  indus- 
trious, and  seldom  difficult  to  manage.  Old  Chief 
Winnemucca  was  an  able  diplomat,  and  many  of  his 
braves  were  fine  hunters  and  guides.  A  great  deal 
of  the  rough  work  of  the  period  in  mining  and  lumber- 


OLD  TIMES  IN  VIRGINIA  CITY.  69 

ing  was  done  by  the  Indians.  In  Wright's  Big  Bonanza 
the  following  conversation  occurs  with  an  old  Piute: 

"  When  me  first  come  here,  no  house  here;  all  sage 
brush.  Me  work  here,  first  time  me  come,  for  Ole  Bir- 
giney,  down  in  Six-Mile  Canyum." 

"At  mining?" 

"  Yes,  minin'.  Me  heap  pull  rocker.  Me  that  time 
know  Comstock,  Ole  Comstock.  You  sabe  him?  " 

"  Yes,  I  have  seen  him.  He  is  dead  now;  got  broke 
up  in  Montana;  bad  luck  all  the  time;  got  crazy;  shot 
himself  in  the  head  with  a  pistol." 

"Hum!  Ole  Comstock  dead!  Well,  Ole  Com- 
stock owe  me  fifty-fi'  dollar.  That  money  gone  now. 
Well,  same  way  Ole  Birginey.  He  owe  me  forty-fi' 
dollar  when  he  die.  He  down  to  Dayton  long  time  ago. 
One  day  he  bully  drunk,  he  get  on  pony,  pony  he  run, 
drag  ole  man  on  the  ground  and  kill  him.  Me  help 
dig  one  grave,  down  by  Carson  Biver." 

A  mining  country  is  always  dangerous  to  walk 
around  in,  for  there  are  hundreds  of  abandoned  pros- 
pect holes  and  shafts  in  the  most  unsuspected  spots, 
perhaps  overgrown  by  weeds  and  bushes.  Many  a  poor 
fellow  looking  for  a  fortune  has  "  mysteriously  disap- 
peared," and  ten  to  twenty  years  later  his  bones  have 
been  found  in  some  forgotten  pit.  Within  a  year  or 
two  after  its  settlement  the  country  around  Virginia 
City  was  fairly  honeycombed  with  worthless  shafts  that 
served  only  to  trap  wild  animals,  goats,  donkeys,  horses, 
cows,  and  occasionally  an  unlucky  miner.  It  added  new 
terrors  to  the  Comstocker's  privilege  of  getting  drunk 
and  going  home  "  across  lots." 

Old  Virginia  City  people  tell  innumerable  stories 
about  these  abandoned  shafts,  relics  of  the  great  rush. 
In  one  case  a  man  started  to  look  up  his  goats,  and  found 
footprints  leading  into  an  old  tunnel.  He  ventured  in, 


70  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

and  fell  into  an  eighty-foot  shaft  which  had  been  sunk 
in  the  tunnel.  The  bodies  of  several  goats  helped  to 
break  his  fall,  and  after  some  hours  his  neighbours 
tracked  him  to  the  place  and  rescued  him.  The  en- 
gineer of  a  Silver  City  mill  was  once  found  bruised 
and  insensible  lying  in  a  shaft  in  Virginia  City,  where 
he  had  remained  for  three  days.  There  is  another  story 
about  a  teamster  who  unhitched  eight  yoke  of  oxen, 
leaving  them  connected  together  by  the  long  log-chain 
and  let  them  browse  around  while  he  cooked  his  din- 
ner. Pretty  soon  he  saw  them  bunch  together  and  dis- 
appear in  a  three-hundred-foot  shaft  which  had  been 
covered  with  a  little  brush,  hardly  enough  to  hold  up  a 
good-sized  dog. 

Speculation  was  of  course  universal.  While  hun- 
dreds of  claims  of  every  description,  located  immediate- 
ly after  the  first  silver  discoveries,  were  still  buried 
under  the  snow,  the  owners  were  pleased  to  claim  and 
the  public  to  believe  that  each  one  of  them  was  as  valu- 
able as  the  Ophir.  These  "  wild-cats/'  as  they  were 
afterward  called,  were  bought  and  sold  with  increasing 
energy  for  months.  The  actually  incorporated  com- 
panies formed  during  1859  and  1860  numbered  thirty- 
seven,  with  a  capital  stock  of  $30,040,000.  The  in- 
corporations of  1861  numbered  forty-nine,  with  a  stock 
capital  of  $31,462,000.  No  one  knows  how  many  thou- 
sands of  claims  besides  these  were  put  on  the  market  in 
those  years.  Time  sifted  out  the  worthless  claims  and 
incorporations  until  only  a  few  were  left.  The  first 
incorporation,  Ophir,  soon  increased  its  capital  stock 
to  over  five  million  dollars,  Gould  and  Curry  came  next 
with  $2,400,000,  and  so  it  went.  At  the  time  of  Ross 
Browne's  visit  in  1860  he  made  an  estimate  of  the  com- 
panies who  "  claimed  to  hold  "  in  the  Comstock  vein. 
There  were  nineteen,  claiming  a  total  of  about  twelve 


OLD  TIMES  IN  VIRGINIA  CITY.  71 

thousand  feet,  and  Billy  Chollar  held  the  largest  slice. 
Prices  ranged  from  two  hundred  to  two  thousand  dol- 
lars per  foot.  Only  five  or  six  of  the  names  familiar  to 
stock  boards  appear  in  the  list. 

Of  "  outside  claims  "  Mr.  Browne  reports  "  about 
forty  miles  said  to  be  on  a  direct  line  with  the  Corn- 
stock/'  and  to  be  richer,  if  possible,  than  the  original 
vein.  Even  the  desert  was  "  pegged  like  the  sole  of  a 
boot"  with  claim  stakes.  " Indications "  being  once 
found  in  a  Virginia  City  cellar,  the  whole  town  site 
was  torn  to  pieces  and  covered  with  conflicting  claims. 

The  miners  had  long  before  provided,  after  a  fash- 
ion, for  a  recorder  of  claims,  and  had  elected  an  honest 
but  illiterate  blacksmith  of  Gold  Hill,  V.  A.  House- 
worth  by  name,  whose  book  of  records  and  memoranda 
is  now  one  of  the  official  treasures  of  Storey  County. 
It  was  Houseworth's  guileless  habit  to  keep  pen,  ink, 
and  the  old  blank  book  on  a  shelf  behind  the  bar  of  an 
adjacent  saloon.  When  miners  came  in  to  register 
their  claims  they  went  to  the  blacksmith  shop,  and 
the  crowd  adjourned  to  the  saloon.  Says  Dan  De 
Quille,  "  The  '  boys '  were  in  the  habit  of  taking  the 
book  from  behind  the  bar  whenever  they  desired  to  con- 
sult it,  and  if  they  thought  a  location  made  by  them 
was  not  advantageously  bounded  they  altered  the 
course  of  their  lines  and  fixed  the  whole  thing  up  in 
accordance  with  the  latest  developments."  It  after- 
ward became  evident  in  the  course  of  many  a  tedious 
and  costly  lawsuit  that  the  miners  who  tore  out  leaves, 
altered  dates,  and  changed  the  records  as  they  chose, 
had  made  endless  trouble  for  themselves  and  for  the 
district. 

Wells  and  Fargo's  Express  Company,  which  has 
helped  to  develop  almost  every  mining  camp  on  the 
Pacific  coast,  opened  an  office  in  Virginia  City  in  the 


72        THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

very  first  days  of  its  existence;  but  for  a  time  at  least 
the  owners  of  Ophir  and  one  or  two  other  claims  banked 
their  gold  dust  with  Lyman  Jones,  who  kept  it  "  with- 
out charge  and  without  responsibility  "  in  a  dry-goods 
box  under  his  bed,  where  twenty  or  thirty  thousand 
dollars  often  reposed  until  the  mine  owners  were  ready 
to  pay  it  out  again. 

The  problems  of  early  transportation  necessarily  in- 
cluded mails  before  the  days  of  stage  coaches.  Snow- 
shoe  Thompson  continued  to  carry  letters  across  the 
mountains  every  winter.  He  even  carried  type  in  this 
way  for  the  first  newspaper  in  Virginia  City.  In  sum- 
mer time,  after  1858,  the  regular  overland  stage  carried 
mails  twice  a  week  along  the  Carson  Valley.  In  April, 
1860,  the  famous  Pony  Express  was  established  across 
the  continent.  Its  quickest  time  was  1,780  miles  in 
five  days  and  eighteen  hours;  stories  of  its  lonely  sta- 
tions and  its  fearless  riders  are  among  the  most  attrac- 
tive of  frontier  traditions. 

That  curious  and  vivid  Western  phrase,  "grape- 
vine telegraph,"  originated  in  1859.  Colonel  Bee  con- 
structed a  telegraph  line  between  Placerville  and  Vir- 
ginia City,  attaching  the  wire  to  the  trees;  their  sway- 
ing stretched  it  until  it  lay  in  loops  on  the  ground,  re- 
sembling the  trailing  California  wild  grapevines.  Fre- 
quent breaks  occurred  from  falling  trees  and  avalanches, 
till  the  line  became  almost  useless,  being  sometimes 
beaten  into  Sacramento  by  the  Pony  Express.  Cali- 
fornia and  Nevada  newspapers  took  it  up,  and  whenever 
a  journalist  wished  to  cast  doubts  on  the  freshness  of 
his  opponent's  news  he  forthwith  accused  him  of  run- 
ning a  grapevine  telegraph.  But  in  the  spring  of  1861 
the  Overland  Company  pushed  into  the  Sierras  and 
successfully  connected  Virginia  City  with  Sacramento 
by  a  modern  telegraph  wire  on  poles. 


OLD  TIMES  IN  VIRGINIA  CITY.  73 

A  little  later  in  point  of  time,  but  still  belonging 
in  essence  to  the  pioneer  period,  was  the  noted  "  Eowdy 
Fund."  The  Territory  of  Nevada  was  organized  by 
act  of  Congress,  March  2,  1861,  and  a  superintendent 
of  schools  was  then  appointed.  Pioneer  schools  sup- 
ported by  individuals  were  already  in  existence.  Vir- 
ginia City  contained  only  two  or  three  children  of 
school  age  at  the  time,  seventeen  in  1862,  and  three 
hundred  and  sixty  the  following  year.  At  Carson  City 
a  characteristic  incident  occurred.  The  town  boasted 
of  a  small  theatre,  and  one  night  two  "  prominent  citi- 
zens/' full  of  whisky  and  bravado,  swaggered  down 
the  main  aisle,  drew  their  revolvers  and  bowie  knives, 
and  ordered  the  curtain  to  be  dropped.  They  then 
mounted  the  stage  and  slashed  the  curtain  to  ribbons 
"in  the  presence  of  all  Carson."  The  next  day  they 
voluntarily  paid  a  thousand  dollars  into  the  town  school 
fund,  where  it  received  the  name  of  the  "  Carson  Rowdy 
Fund."  The  affair,  as  it  proved,  was  the  result  of  a 
wager  made  in  one  of  the  Carson  saloons. 

Before  closing  this  chapter  a  few  statistics  of  the 
towns  of  Washoe  at  the  end  of  1860,  when  winter  had 
already  commenced,  will  give  the  reader  an  idea  of  what 
had  been  accomplished  by  the  pioneers.  In  Virginia 
City  the  huts  of  early  summer  had  mostly  been  re- 
placed by  board  cabins,  for  lumber  had  fallen  to  $80 
per  thousand  as  soon  as  a  good  road  was  built.  Over  a 
hundred  buildings  were  in  process  of  construction,  be- 
sides an  uncounted  number  of  lesser  shanties.  The 
town  contained  38  stores,  25  saloons,  10  livery  stables, 
2  quartz  mills,  5  lumber  yards,  9  restaurants,  8  hotels 
and  boarding  houses,  and  8  law  offices,  besides  bakeries, 
blacksmith  shops,  etc.  The  monthly  rent  of  a  cigar 
stand  was  $125,  and  that  of  a  wooden  warehouse  twenty 
feet  square  was  $250. 


74  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Prices  of  supplies  were  very  variable  during  1860. 
Flour,  which  was  20  cents  a  pound  in  January,  was  $1 
in  April.  The  newspapers  gave  the  following  as  cus- 
tomary rates  until  May  or  June:  Brown  sugar,  50  cents 
a  pound;  rice,  45  cents;  butter,  $1;  tin  plates,  $9  a 
dozen;  liquors,  50  cents  a  glass.  Prices  fell  rapidly 
during  the  summer,  but  rose  again  with  the  first  snow- 
storm. On  October  27th  flour  was  14  cents  per  pound, 
barley  was  12  cents,  and  hay  was  $100  a  ton. 

Wages  were  correspondingly  high.  Masons  re- 
ceived $8  a  day;  carpenters,  $6;  tinsmiths,  $5;  com- 
mon labourers,  $4;  cooks,  $100  a  month;  waiters,  $60. 
Ordinary  miners  got  $5  and  mill  hands  from  $4  to  $6  a 
day. 

At  the  close  of  1860  the  population  of  Silver  City 
near  Devil's  Gate  was  594;  of  Gold  Hill,  600;  and  of 
Virginia  City,  2,244.  The  three  small  settlements  in 
the  valley — Dayton,  Genoa,  and  Carson — had  kept 
reasonable  pace  with  the  three  towns  of  the  Comstock. 
Other  settlements  were  established  in  the  Washoe  Val- 
ley and  the  Truckee  basin.  The  names  of  new  camps 
began  to  be  heard  in  every  direction. 

Everywhere,  after  the  summer  of  1860,  the  Cali- 
fornians  controlled  the  politics  and  business  of  the 
region.  In  the  constitutional  convention  of  1863  all 
except  four  out  of  the  forty-three  delegates  had  come 
to  Nevada  from  California.  In  the  convention  of  1864, 
which  drew  up  the  constitution  under  which  the  State 
of  Nevada  entered  the  Union,  all  except  four  out  of 
forty-six  members  were  Calif ornians.  Long  before  this, 
however,  the  financial  control  of  the  Comstock  had 
largely  passed  into  the  hands  of  San  Francisco  capi- 
talists. 


CHAPTER  X. 

FINDING,  TESTING,  AND  WORKING  ORES. 

BEFORE  the  miner  comes  the  prospector;  the  ore 
must  be  discovered  before  it  can  be  tested,  or  the  pre- 
cious contents  extracted.  We  have  been  so  long  follow- 
ing the  fortunes  of  a  single  camp  that  we  have  in  a 
measure  neglected  the  hero  of  many  an  unsung  epic 
of  the  American  frontier.  People  often  wonder  why 
rich  mines  remain  so  long  undiscovered,  and  why  the 
early  prospectors  made  so  many  mistakes,  overlooked 
so  many  rich  districts.  On  the  contrary,  a  little  reflec- 
tion will  convince  any  one  that  the  exploration  accom- 
plished by  the  comparatively  small  class  of  pioneers 
who  devote  themselves  to  looking  for  mines  is  really 
very  creditable. 

Wherever  the  old  quartz  prospectors  wandered  with 
their  blankets  and  burros  they  examined  with  critical 
gaze  every  boulder,  and  tried  to  trace  every  scattered 
fragment  of  "  float  rock  "  back  to  the  ledge  from  which 
it  came.  They  endured  nameless  hardships,  fought  In- 
dians, starved  and  froze  among  the  snow  peaks,  perished 
by  thirst  in  the  desert,  or  became  old  and  worn  out 
long  before  their  time,  despite  their  sober  and  outdoor 
lives.  With  pick  and  rifle  they  opened  up  nearly  all 
the  great  mining  districts  of  Nevada,  Arizona,  Colorado, 
Idaho,  and  Montana.  The  true  story  of  their  lives 
has  never  been  written,  and  never  can  be  written;  it 
remains  a  sealed  book,  in  a  mysterious  language  of 

75 


76        THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

which  only  occasional  episodes  may  be  haltingly  trans- 
lated. The  story  in  its  fulness  is  only  known  to  those 
who  have  spent  years  as  wandering  prospectors,  the 
Boones  and  Carsons  of  the  mining  class,  and  such  men 
can  not  tell  it  themselves. 

Each  prospector  develops  in  the  course  of  time  his 
own  pet  theory  of  the  formation  of  rocks,  and  more 
particularly  of  the  genesis  of  gold  and  silver.  He 
knows  certain  rocks,  usually  by  terms  of  his  own,  and 
all  the  rocks  he  doesn't  know  are  grouped  under  the 
convenient  classification  of  "  porphyry/'  An  observ- 
ing writer,  F.  M.  Endlick,  in  the  Overland  Monthly, 
fifteen  years  ago,  narrated  something  of  the  experiences 
of  Grizzly  Joe  and  Dutch  Billy.  They  had  followed 
up  a  bit  of  float  and  at  last  found  the  ledge  from  which 
it  came,  high  up  on  the  mountain  side.  It  seemed 
rich,  and  one  of  them  guarded  it  while  the  other  went 
to  the  nearest  town,  several  days'  journey,  to  obtain 
an  assay — thirty-two  ounces  of  gold  and  nine  of  silver 
to  the  ton. 

They  named  it  the  "Little  Annie,"  after  a  frail, 
fair-haired  child  of  years  before,  away  back  in  some 
Eastern  town.  After  a  few  weeks,  as  they  worked  on 
the  ledge,  she  (all  ore  veins  are  feminine  in  miner 
phraseology) — she  "  did  not  show  up  well."  Pretty  soon 
the  two  walls  inclosing  the  vein  of  ore  came  closer  and 
closer  together;  after  a  few  more  days  there  was  no 
ore  in  the  bottom  of  the  sloping  shaft — the  vein  had 
"  pinched  out "  ;  "  Little  Annie  was  gone."  The  two 
prospectors  contemplated  the  deceitful  "gash  vein" 
with  a  mingled  expression  of  grief  and  astonishment. 
Then,  striking  camp,  they  pushed  on  toward  another 
district.  Winter  was  approaching  and  "  grass  was  get- 
ting short "  with  them — that  is,  their  funds  were  run- 
ning low. 


FINDING,  TESTING,  AND  WORKING  ORES.     Y7 

"  Halloo,  stranger! "  said  Grizzly  Joe  a  few  weeks 
later  to  a  dilapidated-looking  specimen  whose  back  was 
turned  to  the  district  they  were  bound  for  and  who 
was  evidently  trying  to  escape  from  it  with  all  pos- 
sible speed.  "  Halloo,  I  say;  been  up  to  the  new 
mines  ?" 

"  You  bet!  "  was  the  laconic  but  expressive  answer, 
while  the  stranger  glanced  sorrowfully  at  the  holes 
which  constituted  the  greater  portion  of  his  boots,  and 
at  the  cacti  and  obsidian  splinters  strewn  over  the 
desert  trail. 

"Let's  have  your  candid  opinion  of  the  chances 
there." 

"  Chances?  I  never  seen  none.  There  may  have 
been  some,  but  they're  mighty  well  corraled,  and  I 
don't  think  the  whole  district  is  worth  a  blank  anyhow, 
Cap'n." 

"You're  kinder  down  on  your  luck;  but  never 
mind,  stranger,  you'll  strike  it  yet  if  you  stick  to  it. 
Guess  we  might  as  well  be  there  as  anywhere  else." 

The  two  prospectors  resumed  their  journey  with 
dogged  resolution. 

Fortune  finally  smiles  upon  their  efforts.  Beyond 
the  new  district,  in  a  region  hitherto  but  slightly  ex- 
plored by  prospectors,  they  find  a  permanent  lode,  and 
appropriately  name  it "  Last  Chance."  Buyers  come  in, 
for  one  or  two  noted  mines  are  in  the  region,  and  pretty 
soon  they  sell  out  for  a  few  thousand  dollars,  divide, 
and  separate  for  the  winter.  "  Dutch,  old  pard,  next 
spring  we'll  take  another  trip!"  is  Joe's  parting  re- 
mark. 

In  the  last  decade,  prospecting  has  more  and  more 
attracted  adventurous  men,  and  in  some  cases  women. 
Several  thousand  persons  are  busy,  even  while  these 
lines  are  being  printed,  looking  for  new  mines  in  deserts 


78  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

and  mountains.  In  some  districts  prospecting  can  be 
done  only  in  winter,  in  others  only  in  summer,  while  a 
few  favoured  regions  give  explorers  a  chance  through 
the  entire  year.  Most  of  these  men  are  "grub-stakers" ; 
they  get  enough  to  live  on — perhaps  $15  a  month — 
from  wealthier  miners  or  from  speculators.  The  courts 
have  decided  that  a  grub-staker  is  entitled  to  half  of 
every  mine  he  discovers,  and  this  interest,  now  and 
then,  gives  a  man  a  fortune.  Very  few  mines  are  being 
found  in  these  days  by  haphazard  luck.  The  success- 
ful prospectors  are  patient,  methodical,  indefatigable 
workers,  who  often  spend  years  in  following  up  indica- 
tions, exploring  every  ravine  and  peak  in  a  promis- 
ing district.  Every  year  some  grizzled  old  prospector 
turns  up  with  valuable  discoveries,  after  half  a  life- 
time of  arduous,  exacting  toil  on  the  frontier,  and  the 
good  news  inspires  all  the  other  prospectors  with  re- 
newed happiness. 

The  processes  of  testing  gold  ores  are  within  the 
comprehension  of  the  most  ignorant,  but  the  most 
highly  trained  intelligence  is  required  in  the  more 
delicate  and  difficult  tests  of  the  silver  assayer.  Near- 
ly every  quartz  miner  and  prospector  in  Comstock  days 
carried  a  small  magnifying  glass  with  which  to  examine 
ores.  If  the  rock  looked  well,  a  specimen  was  pounded 
to  dust  in  a  common  mortar  or  on  a  flat  stone.  The 
prospector  then  took  it  in  his  horn  spoon,  a  flat  vessel 
made  from  half  of  an  ox  horn,  and  washed  it  with 
great  care  so  as  to  save  every  colour  of  gold.  It  will 
be  seen  that  all  this  resembles  the  simple  pick-and-pan 
method  of  prospecting  for  placer  gold.  The  quartz 
prospector  prefers  the  horn,  because  he  only  pans  out 
a  few  ounces  of  powdered  rock,  and  the  flakes  are  so 
much  finer  that  a  more  manageable  tool  is  required 
than  in  the  case  of  the  placer  prospector.  This  process 


FINDING,  TESTING,  AND  WORKING  ORES.      ?9 

is  called  "horning  a  prospect,"  or  "assaying  with  a 
spoon." 

In  early  days  the  only  test  that  prospectors 
knew  how  to  use  for  silver  was  with  acids.  They  pul- 
verized the  specimens  as  if  for  a  gold  test  and  washed 
the  lighter  matter  away,  leaving  all  the  metallic  por- 
tion. This  residuum  was  then  put  into  a  flask  of  an- 
nealed glass,  covered  with  nitric  acid,  and  heated  over 
a  flame.  The  contents  of  the  flask  were  then  treated 
with  salt,  or  with  muriatic  acid,  when  chloride  of  silver 
was  precipitated.  Chloride  of  silver,  once  obtained, 
was  easily  reduced  to  the  metallic  form  by  drying  it, 
placing  it  in  a  hollow  cut  in  a  piece  of  charcoal  with  a 
little  soda,  and  blowing  the  flame  of  a  candle  against 
it,  when  it  made  a  button  of  pure  silver. 

The  old  prospectors  soon  discovered  that  there 
were  ores  that  were  "  obstinate  "  and  refractory  under 
the  nitric-acid  test.  When  the  value  of  chlorides  was 
discovered  they  dubbed  every  heavy  metallic  rock  that 
they  could  not  test  for  themselves  a  "  true  silver  chlo- 
ride." As  the  chloride  ores  have  to  be  smelted  in  a  cruci- 
ble, the  nearest  assay er  was  called  upon,  and  his  returns 
were  looked  for  with  great  anxiety.  Usually  the  rock 
was  not  worth  working,  but  sometimes  it  was  a  sudden 
bonanza,  as  was  the  case  with  the  astonishingly  rich 
chlorides  of  Colorado.  In  these  days  the  best  pros- 
pectors who  do  not  wish  to  take  any  one  else  into  their 
confidence  have  mastered  the  principles  of  using  the 
crucible.  Many  a  man  who  goes  into  the  desert  with 
his  pack  mule  carries  something  of  an  assaying  outfit, 
and  can  test  almost  any  ore. 

Since  the  Comstock  mines  contained  gold,  silver, 
copper,  and  other  minerals,  the  management  of  their 
ores  presented  almost  unsurmountable  difficulties  to  the 
early  miners  as  soon  as  they  reached  the  ledge  and  were 


80  THE  STORY  OF  THE   MINE. 

compelled  to  abandon  their  rockers.  They  naturally 
turned  for  help  to  the  few  Mexicans  in  the  region,  for 
every  Mexican  was  supposed  to  have  an  intuitive  knowl- 
edge of  silver-mining  processes.  As  long  as  this  con- 
fidence lasted  it  was  a  very  good  thing  for  the  sheep 
herders  that  strayed  over  the  Sierras  from  the  San 
Joaquin,  for  every  Comstocker  wanted  to  hire  them  at 
once. 

When  the  mines  were  somewhat  opened — that  is, 
quarried  into  by  the  use  of  shovels,  picks,  crowbars, 
drills,  and  blasting  powder — there  was  quartz  to  be 
worked  for  its  hidden  metals.  The  arrastra  was  the 
first  method  adopted.  An  arrastra  is  one  of  the  sim- 
plest methods  of  pulverizing  and  amalgamating  aurif- 
erous quartz.  It  was  invented,  or  re-invented,  centu- 
ries ago  by  the  Mexicans,  and  consists  of  a  circular 
bed  from  eight  to  twenty  feet  across,  paved  with  stones, 
in  which  quartz  that  has  been  broken  into  small  pieces 
by  a  sledge  hammer  is  placed  and  slowly  ground  to  dust 
by  the  dragging  of  a  large  "  muller  "  or  slab  of  granite 
over  the  quartz-covered  pavement.  In  the  best  form  of 
the  arrastra  the  paving  is  very  carefully  done  with  hewn 
rock,  granite,  or  greenstone;  a  boundary  wall  of  granite 
a  foot  or  two  in  height  confines  the  quartz,  and  a  post 
rises  in  the  centre  from  a  stone  or  iron  socket.  Two 
arms  project  from  the  post,  fastened  in  a  framework 
BO  as  to  revolve  easily,  and  one  of  them  projects  so  far 
over  the  wall  of  the  arrastra  that  a  mule  can  be  har- 
nessed there.  Suspended  from  the  arms  are  two  huge 
mullers,  or  sometimes  four,  in  which  case  two  mules 
are  necessary.  Each  muller  weighs  five  hundred  or  a 
thousand  pounds,  and  is  suspended  so  that  the  forward 
end  is  an  inch  above  the  pavement  while  the  other  end 
drags. 

The  rule  for  breaking  the  quartz  is  to  make  it  like 


FINDING,  TESTING,  AND  WORKING  ORES.      81 

good  road  metal — no  piece  larger  than  an  inch  across. 
About  four  hundred  pounds  is  then  put  into  an  arrastra 
ten  or  twelve  feet  in  diameter;  a  thousand  pounds  into 
the  largest  size.  If  the  quartz  is  not  very  hard  it  can 
be  pulverized  in  four  or  five  hours.  The  ore  is  kept 
wet  all  the  time,  and  the  grinding  is  continued  until 
the  mass  is  like  cream.  Quicksilver  is  then  put  in  at 
the  rate  of  an  ounce  or  more  to  each  ounce  of  gold  that 
is  supposed  to  be  in  the  quartz,  and  the  grinding  goes 
on  for  an  hour  or  two  longer  until  the  amalgamation 
is  considered  complete.  Quite  a  stream  of  water  is  then 
allowed  to  run  in  through  a  sluice  gate,  and  the  grind- 
ing continues  half  an  hour,  to  let  the  amalgam  settle 
in  the  bottom.  Grinding  then  stops.  Another  gate 
is  opened,  and  the  stream  of  water  soon  washes  out 
the  fine  gray  mud  to  which  the  rock  has  been  reduced, 
leaving  the  metal  on  the  bed  of  the  arrastra. 

From  arrastras  to  stamp  mills  is  an  easy  step  for 
Americans.  Water  claims  and  mill  sites  were  taken  up 
almost  as  soon  as  work  had  fairly  begun  on  the  Corn- 
stock,  and  machinery  was  ordered  in  California.  The 
principle  of  the  stamp  mill  is  very  simple.  Heavy  iron 
stems  raised  by  iron  cams  and  receiving  a  rotary  motion 
as  they  rise  are  used  to  crush  the  quartz.  The  mill 
men  of  Nevada  County,  where  quartz  mining  was  first 
undertaken  on  an  extensive  scale,  were  in  great  demand 
on  the  Comstock.  They  knew  all  about  the  most  per- 
fect processes  in  use  in  that  famous  gold-bearing  dis- 
trict, and  when  they  went  to  Washoe  they  built  mills 
on  the  same  general  plans,  with  such  modifications  as 
experience  suggested,  but  none  of  them  knew  much 
about  silver  ores. 

The  first  working  of  Comstock  ore  was  done  at 
San  Francisco  in  the  winter  of  1859,  when  forty  tons 
of  selected  rock  from  Ophir  was  handled  at  some  profit, 


82  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

though  costing  about  twenty-four  thousand  dollars,  in- 
cluding transportation  and  other  charges.  There 
could  be  but  little  thousand-dollar  ore,  even  in  Ophir, 
and  so  it  was  necessary  to  build  mills  in  Washoe.  A 
well-written  paper  by  A.  D.  Hodges,  Jr.,  of  San  Fran- 
cisco, entitled  Amalgamation  at  the  Comstock  Lode, 
Nevada,  which  was  read  before  the  American  Institute 
of  Mining  Engineers  in  September,  1890,  gives  a  trust- 
worthy account  of  early  milling  operations.  Many  of 
the  prominent  mill  men  and  inventors  of  the  period 
were  more  or  less  controversial,  and  waged  a  dreary 
warfare  against  their  rivals  through  numberless  news- 
paper articles  and  pamphlets  whose  interest  for  modern 
readers  has  long  evaporated. 

Almarin  B.  Paul,  a  very  able  and  intelligent  mill 
man  of  Nevada  City,  began  to  study  the  silver  sul- 
phurets  of  the  Comstock  in  the  autumn  of  1859.  He 
treated  them  with  the  chemicals  of  the  patio  process, 
and,  after  many  experiments,  went  to  the  mines,  where 
he  organized  "  Washoe  Gold  and  Silver  Mining  Com- 
pany No.  1."  Selecting  a  site  for  his  Pioneer  Mill,  in 
Gold  Canon,  near  Devil's  Gate,  he  signed  contracts 
on  June  12,  1860,  to  work  ore  from  Gold  Hill  on  and 
after  sixty  days  from  that  date.  Few  men  would  have 
taken  such  risks,  for  the  machinery  had  to  be  made  in 
San  Francisco  and  transported  across  the  Sierras,  while 
the  needed  lumber  was  still  growing  in  the  forests. 
However,  Paul  worked  as  one  inspired,  and  on  August 
llth,  just  in  time  to  save  his  contracts,  the  steam  whistle 
blew,  and  the  twenty-four  stamps  of  the  Pioneer  Mill 
began  to  rise  and  fall  upon  Gold  Hill  ore.  Three  hours 
later,  and  not  far  off,  Paul's  rivals,  Coover  and  Harris, 
of  Amador  County,  California,  set  in  motion  the  ma- 
chinery of  their  nine-stamp  mill. 

Without  going  into  more  technical  details,  I  may 


FINDING,  TESTING,  AND  WORKING  ORES.      83 

explain  that  Paul  crushed  the  ore  dry  in  his  batteries, 
and  then  amalgamated  it  in  small  Knox  pans,  each 
of  which  held  about  three  hundred  pounds.  Each 
charge  was  treated  with  forty  pounds  of  quicksilver, 
a  pint  of  salt,  and  a  few  ounces  of  copper  sulphate. 
When  Paul  had  fitted  steam  chambers  to  the  pan  bot- 
toms his  Washoe  process  of  pan  amalgamation  was  an 
acknowledged  triumph,  especially  with  Gold  Hill  ore, 
which  was  simpler  than  that  of  the  North  End  mines. 
In  a  few  months  Paul's  company  began  to  build  an- 
other and  much  larger  mill  of  sixty-four  stamps,  in- 
troducing mechanical  improvements.  Other  mills  fol- 
lowed, constructed  with  more  and  more  skill.  The 
ultimate  Comstock  verdict  was  in  favour  of  stamps  of 
about  nine  hundred  pounds,  dropping  about  a  hundred 
times  a  minute,  and  crushing  wet.  Since  that  time 
the  amalgamating  pans  have  been  greatly  improved. 

When  the  first  mills  were  completed,  the  only  mines 
that  were  being  worked  in  a  manner  that  really  indi- 
cated the  permanent  value  of  the  district  were  the 
Ophir,  the  California,  and  the  Mexican.  As  the  ore 
was  taken  out  of  these  and  a  few  other  Comstock  mines 
it  was  assorted  into  grades.  The  best,  which  would 
yield  one  thousand  dollars  a  ton  and  upward,  was  sacked 
for  shipment  to  England,  except  the  small  amount 
required  to  keep  the  arrastras  running.  The  second- 
and  third-class  ores  were  piled  up  for  future  milling. 
Rock  that  would  not  pay  fifty  dollars  a  ton  was  hardly 
considered  worth  saving. 

Even  after  pan-amalgamation  systems  began  to 
come  into  general  use  some  of  the  early  milling  men, 
like  some  of  the  early  miners,  learned  their  business 
by  slow  degrees.  They  knew  very  little  about  silver 
ores,  and  so  the  day  of  the  "  patent-medicine-process 
fiend  "  dawned  on  the  Comstock.  Washoe  was  fairly 
7 


84:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

overrun  by  eager  inventors  with  chemical  compounds 
that  they  felt  certain  would  capture  every  particle  of 
gold,  silver,  lead,  copper,  and  other  metals  and  grade 
them  into  separate  piles.  Every  ragged  and  penniless 
dead  beat  in  Virginia  City  buttonholed  mine  owners 
and  mill  men  with  a  story  of  some  secret  process  "  worth 
millions,  sir! "  Sulphate  of  copper,  salt,  and  quick- 
silver, long  used  by  silver  miners  and  mentioned  in 
every  mining  book,  were  not  sufficient.  Neglecting 
the  good  old  axiom  that  thorough  grinding  and  work- 
ing of  the  ores  is  the  primary  principle  of  successful 
milling,  everybody  seemed  to  go  rainbow  chasing  for 
something  that  would  perform  impossible  chemical 
wonders.  A  number  actually  used  immense  quantities 
of  a  bitter  sage-brush  decoction,  and  were  thoroughly 
persuaded  of  its  efficiency  until  a  few  of  the  news- 
papers praised  the  famous  "  sage-brush  process  "  to  the 
skies.  As  late  as  1862  there  was  a  mill  on  the  Comstock 
that  advertised  reduction  of  ores  by  the  "  sage-brush 
method/'  It  was  argued  that  Nature  had  created  this 
most  bitter  and  worthless  Artemisia  for  the  express 
purpose  of  getting  the  metal  out  of  Nevada's  silver 
mountains! 

When  such  absurdities  as  this  were  believed  by  the 
masses  it  is  no  wonder  that  half-crazy  schemers  with  a 
few  ponderous  phrases  at  their  command  could  impose 
upon  the  community  with  secret  processes  for  which 
they  wished  large  sums  of  money  or  royalties.  They 
hailed  from  every  part  of  the  world.  The  English- 
man had  "  studied  silver  in  Cornwall,"  the  German  at 
Freiberg,  the  Spaniard  in  Sonora  or  Peru,  and  each 
and  all  carried  the  whole  trick  in  a  little  bottle  in  his 
vest  pocket,  ready,  for  a  consideration,  to  pour  a  few 
drops  into  the  amalgamation  pan. 

The  mill  men,  as  I  have  said,  caught  the  popular 


FINDING,  TESTING,  AND  WORKING  ORES.      85 

desire  for  some  easy  and  "dead-sure"  method,  and 
long  after  the  notion  of  cedar  and  sage-brush  decoc- 
tions was  definitely  abandoned  many  of  them  were 
still  ransacking  the  drug  stores  of  California  for  new 
and  unheard-of  substances  to  mix  with  the  pulverized 
rock  in  the  batteries.  Alum,  saltpetre,  borax,  potash; 
all  the  acids  obtainable,  from  muriatic  to  sulphuric; 
tobacco  enough  for  an  Australian  "  sheep-dip "  ;  a 
multitude  of  strange  drugs  and  vile  concoctions  never 
before  known  in  the  mining  world,  and  seldom  since — 
such  were  some  of  the  contents  of  these  witch  caldrons. 

Meanwhile  the  building  of  new  mills  went  on  with 
all  haste  possible,  at  great  expense  and  in  all  sorts  of 
places,  whether  or  not  there  was  ore  enough  in  sight 
to  keep  them  busy.  No  less  than  seventy-six  mills, 
costing  in  the  aggregate  six  million  dollars  and  carrying 
1,153  stamps,  were  built  and  running  by  the  end  of 
1861,  and  twenty  more  were  planned  or  being  built. 
Several  Mexican  patio  yards  and  fifty  or  more  arrastras 
were  in  existence.  All  this  was  within  fifteen  miles  of 
the  Comstock.  The  mills  lined  Seven-Mile,  Six-Mile, 
and  Gold  Cafions,  from  Virginia  City  to  the  Carson 
River;  they  were  scattered  along  the  Carson  for  ten 
miles  or  more,  and  several  were  even  on  Washoe  Lake. 

It  would  seem  as  if  the  main  problems  were  now 
solved  and  the  success  of  the  districts  assured.  But, 
notwithstanding  the  plenitude  of  energy  and  capital 
poured  out,  the  chief  result  for  years  was  loss  and  bitter 
disappointment.  So  many  mills  were  built  that  the  ore 
in  sight  in  the  mines  could  not  possibly  supply  half  of 
them,  and  the  price  of  reduction  fell  to  twenty  or  thirty 
dollars  a  ton,  which  did  not  pay  the  majority  of  the 
mill  owners  with  their  crude  processes  and  high  prices 
of  labour.  The  whole  country  was  so  overflowing  with 
excitement  that  every  prospector  deemed  himself  a 


86  THE  STOEY  OF  THE  MINE. 

millionaire,  whose  rich  ledges  had  only  to  be  poured 
into  hoppers  to  run  out  bullion.  Every  one  was  will- 
ing to  accept  the  wealth  of  the  region  on  the  strength 
of  vest-pocket  samples  of  ore.  Forgotten  mines,  like 
the  once-popular  "  Sucker,"  were  expected,  according 
to  their  assayers,  to  pay  five  hundred  dollars  to  the  ton 
— and  yielded  less  than  twenty  dollars  on  a  working  test, 
so  that  none  of  the  mills  of  the  period  could  show  the 
owners  a  profit.  Numbers  of  the  mines  never  yielded 
much  besides  assessments  and  litigation. 

Kelly's  First  Directory  of  Nevada  Territory,  which 
I  find  was  written  for  him  by  the  versatile  Dr.  De 
Groot,  and  is  now  an  extremely  rare  volume,  contains 
descriptions  of  all  the  mills  built  in  the  various  Nevada 
districts  before  the  close  of  1862.  i  He  lists  some 
eighty-two  effective  mills.  A  low  estimate  would  be 
that  fifteen  hundred  tons  of  ore  a  day  could  be  worked 
in  all  these  mills — provided  that  it  could  be  obtained; 
but  the  mines  were  not  producing  more  than  four  hun- 
dred tons  daily!  The  published  statistics  of  the  mills 
vary  greatly.  The  Surveyor  General's  report  for  1865 
mentions  only  eighty.  J.  Ross  Browne's  report,  three 
years  later,  gives  122  mills,  with  1,462  stamps. 

Some  of  the  mills  of  the  pioneer  period  (1860-1863) 
are  still  spoken  of  among  miners  as  magnificent  ex- 
amples of  wild  extravagance.  The  great  Ophir  Mill 
property  contained,  besides  the  mill  itself,  large  shops, 
stables,  offices,  and  residences.  Up  to  April,  1862,  as 
estimated  by  Mr.  Lord,  $349,200  was  paid  for  the  re- 
duction of  only  three  thousand  tons  of  ore,  for  freight, 
and  for  office  expenses.  The  works  had  cost  $200,000 
additional.  "Gould  and  Curry"  built  the  greatest 
mill  folly  of  the  time  on  an  artificial  plateau  cut  out  of 
a  rocky  point  two  miles  east  of  Virginia  City.  It  was 
a  highly  artistic  structure  of  stone  and  wood,  ap- 


FINDING,  TESTING,  AND  WORKING  ORES.      87 

preached  by  steps  of  stone  and  broad  terraces.  A  lake 
and  fountain,  and  groups  of  costly  residences,  offices, 
and  cottages  won  the  visitor's  admiration.  Very  nearly 
a  million  dollars  was  spent  here  in  picturesque  pro- 
fusion by  the  prosperous  mine  owners,  then  in  the 
full  glory  of  a  famous  bonanza.  But  turning  to  re- 
sults, we  find  that  at  the  close  of  the  year  1863  this 
prodigal  mill  had  been  able  to  reduce  only  4,812  tons 
of  ore,  at  a  cost  of  about  fifty  dollars  a  ton.  It  was 
found  necessary  to  throw  out  nearly  all  the  machinery 
and  reconstruct  the  mill  in  1864  at  a  cost  of  nearly 
$600,000. 

As  the  reader  may  conclude  from  the  preceding 
paragraphs,  none  of  the  pioneer  mills — not  even  the 
costliest  and  largest — were  such  mills  as  a  progressive 
miner  of  the  present  time  would  use  if  he  could  help 
himself,  though  they  were  the  best  that  could  be  con- 
structed upon  lines  of  California  experience.  But  mil- 
lions of  dollars  were  undoubtedly  lost  in  the  first  few 
years,  chiefly  because  the  tailings,  or  pulverized  rock 
that  has  passed  through  all  the  processes  for  gathering 
up  the  metal,  were  suffered  to  go  into  the  streams,  to 
be  washed  at  last  into  the  Carson  sink,  or  alkaline  lake. 
No  one  thought  of  putting  in  a  flume  and  running  the 
waste  to  some  flat,  to  be  kept  until  cheaper  processes 
made  it  possible  to  work  it  at  a  profit. 

Mexicans  are  accustomed  to  saving  mine  tailings, 
and  if  any  Mexican  was  out  of  work  he  went  down  into 
Gold  Canon  and  "  concentrated  tailings  "  for  a  living, 
usually  by  the  patio  process.  Two  men  who  worked 
in  the  summer  of  1 860  in  this  way  are  said  to  have  taken 
three  thousand  dollars  apiece  with  them  when  they 
left  the  district.  Although  there  was  every  sort  of  evi- 
dence that  the  streams  were  full  of  precious  metals 
lost  from  the  mills,  it  was  years  before  the  tailings 


88  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

were  properly  impounded  in  reservoirs  for  future  work- 
ing. 

The  problem  of  handling  tailings  severely  tried  the 
best  metallurgical  skill  of  the  times.  The  term  "  tail- 
ings" as  here  used  includes  all  the  ore  residues,  or 
waste,  whether  slimes,  pan  tailings,  or  concentrates. 
Louis  Janin  and  his  brother,  leading  metallurgists  on 
the  Comstock,  began  to  experiment  with  tailings  as 
early  as  1862,  perfected  a  process,  and  built  separate 
mills,  gradually  creating  an  industry  which  employed 
many  men  and  at  times  yielded  large  profits.  The 
most  successful  tailings  mill  was  Langtry's  famous 
Lyon  Mill,  at  Dayton,  at  the  mouth  of  Gold  Canon. 

One  of  the  heaviest  expenses  of  mill  men  is  for  mer- 
cury used  in  amalgamation.  Quicksilver  will  divide 
into  infinitesimal  particles,  and  the  smallest  particle 
was  found  to  contain  gold  and  silver.  How  should 
it  all  be  secured?  Water  that  seems  as  pure  as  a  moun- 
tain spring,  because  it  has  passed  through  flumes  and 
settling  pits  after  leaving  the  mill,  is  yet  found  to  con- 
tain these  particles.  Even  as  the  mint  authorities  find 
it  necessary  to  save  all  the  dust  and  soot,  even  on  the 
roof,  and  occasionally  melt  out  the  gold,  so  the  mill 
owners  in  every  district  find  that  the  profit  of  the  dis- 
trict depends  upon  a  constant  attention  to  details,  and 
more  particularly  upon  adopting  every  possible  method 
of  securing  these  elusive  particles.  As  for  the  quick- 
silver which  is  so  necessary  to  miners,  the  Comstock 
ores  alone  have  sometimes  required  as  much  as  eight 
hundred  flasks,  or  61,200  pounds  a  month.  A  whole 
colony  of  people  in  the  California  Coast  Kange,  at  New 
Almaden,  were  once  producing  quicksilver  with  all 
their  might  to  send  to  Nevada.  As  the  miners  are 
fond  of  saying,  "  It  takes  one  mine  to  run  another/' 

The  end  of  all  such  prospecting,  costly  testing,  ex- 


FINDING,  TESTING,  AND  WORKING  ORES.      89 

perimenting  with  ores,  and  building  expensive  mills  in 
any  new  district,  is  that  at  last  it  is  definitely  determined 
whether  or  not  the  ores  can  be  worked  with  profit.  If 
not,  the  whole  place  goes  to  ruin.  Mills,  roads,  shafts, 
tunnels,  houses,  hotels  are  deserted  more  rapidly  than 
they  were  constructed,  and  everything  is  often  aban- 
doned as  not  worth  hauling  out.  Avalanches  sweep 
away  the  buildings  or  they  fall  into  ruins.  Grizzly  and 
panther  prowl  around  the  deserted  camp  where  thou- 
sands of  men  had  staked  their  hopes  and  fortunes. 
There  are  many  such  deserted  towns  in  the  barren 
mountains  whose  very  names  are  forgotten.  The  men 
that  founded  them  are  dead;  the  trails  are  obliterated. 
There  is  no  pasture,  or  forest,  or  farm  land  to  tempt  any 
one  to  dwell  there  again.  It  is  a  more  profound  desola- 
tion than  the  desolation  of  Tadmor  or  Nineveh. 

But  if  the  ore  is  really  rich,  no  matter  how  re- 
fractory, the  story  of  a  deserted  mining  camp  is  never 
sealed  up  and  put  away.  As  long  as  it  remains  an  un- 
solved problem  in  metallurgy,  it  attracts  tireless  in- 
terest in  the  world  of  mining  science  until  some  new 
process — cyanide,  or  something  else — is  found  to  do 
the  work.  Till  then,  the  best  skill  of  the  laboratories 
of  America  and  Europe  is  focused  upon  the  difficulty, 
and  new  hosts  of  miners  are  only  waiting  the  word 
from  some  discoverer  to  pour  again  into  the  ruined 
camp  and  dispossess  the  panther  and  the  grizzly. 
Sometimes  they  find  a  lonely  miner  there  who  has  held 
his  claim  a  quarter  of  a  century  or  more,  waiting  for 
some  one  to  unlock  the  treasure-house;  sometimes 
they  find  only  his  bones,  for  Science,  unheeding, 
eternal,  takes  no  count  of  human  years. 


CHAPTEE  XI. 

GREAT   MECHANICAL   PROBLEMS   SOLVED. 

Too  much,  emphasis  can  hardly  be  put  upon  the 
purely  business  side  of  mining  on  a  large  scale,  and 
the  complete  organization  displayed  therein.  A  fa- 
vourite device  of  the  cheap  mining-camp  novel,  intent 
on  thrilling  situations,  is  to  populate  the  abandoned 
drifts  and  worked-out  ore  chambers  with  rival  secret 
societies  of  regulators  and  desperadoes.  Here  crime 
"  holds  high  carnival "  through  plot  and  counter- 
plot and  mystic  midnight  sessions  (even  in  mines  such 
meetings  must  take  place  at  the  time-honoured  hour). 
All  this  goes  on  for  weeks  without  causing  the  slightest 
suspicion  on  the  part  of  the  honest  miners  or  mine 
owners  that  outsiders  are  occupying  the  place  in  a 
sort  of  Box-and-Cox  manner.  Such  a  scene  in  a  novel 
or  on  the  stage  is  apt  to  rouse  the  rude  laughter  of 
those  who  know  mines  and  mine  owners  as  they  really 
are. 

A  quartz  mine  is  always  guarded  with  jealous  care, 
especially  if  its  shares  are  listed  on  the  stock  boards. 
No  one  goes  down  without  a  permit,  and  certain  por- 
tions of  the  mine  are  never  visited  except  by  the  owner, 
the  superintendent,  and  a  few  reliable  men.  The 
actual  condition  of  the  mine  is  only  known  to  a  few 
persons.  Many  times  the  whole  mine  is  shut  down 
to  outsiders,  so  that  even  personal  friends,  newspaper 
reporters,  and  men  of  science  are  kept  from  any  knowl- 

90 


GREAT  MECHANICAL  PROBLEMS  SOLVED.     91 

edge  of  what  is  going  on  within.  As  a  consequence 
of  such  systematized  watchfulness,  few  persons  ever 
see  the  whole  working  of  a  mine,  and  a  multitude  of 
ahsurd  popular  myths  have  arisen.  In  fact,  most 
people  never  see  anything  of  a  quartz  mine  in  opera- 
tion, for  they  are  all  difficult  of  access.  Lastly,  there 
is  only  a  small  proportion  of  those  who  do  visit  such 
a  mine  who  ever  obtain  a  true  conception  of  the  me- 
chanical problems  involved  in  the  gigantic  task  of 
working  it  successfully. 

Comstock  miners  say  that  it  is  evident  that  the 
preconceived  ideas  of  most  persons  who  visit  Virginia 
City  to  see  the  mines  are  derived  from  quarries  or  coal 
mines,  and  neither  are  of  much  value  in  the  case.  A 
quarry  of  building  stone,  opened  to  the  sky,  certainly 
requires  much  and  highly  skilled  labour  to  choose 
the  valuable  portions  and  reject  the  inferior,  to  clear 
away  the  refuse,  and  to  cut  and  break  out  the  required 
blocks.  Expensive  and  powerful  machinery  is  used. 
All  the  surroundings  of  the  occupation  are  large  and 
free,  so  that  the  quarryman  is  a  sturdy  figure  among 
craftsmen,  but  quarrying  can  not  even  be  called  an 
apprenticeship  to  quartz  mining.  A  collier  encounters 
many  of  the  difficulties  of  the  miner  for  metals,  but 
others  are  equally  unknown  to  him,  and  he  often  quar- 
ries along  in  the  coal  vein  as  easily  and  steadily  as  if 
he  were  breaking  out  slabs  of  sandstone  from  a  wind- 
swept hillside. 

Mining  is  not  well-digging  or  quarrying,  even  in 
the  blanket  deposits  of  Arizona,  or  the  blanket  veins  of 
the  Band,  though  sometimes  ore  bodies  are  found  that 
require  little  other  labour.  But  every  mine  of  the  true 
fissure-vein  type  is  an  original  and  separate  problem. 
Underlying  the  picturesque  details  are  vast  and  ever- 
increasing  difficulties,  met  or  avoided  by  constantly 


92        THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

developing  human  skill,  rising  in  time  of  need  to  posi- 
tive genius,  so  that  a  great  mining  engineer  ranks  with 
the  huilders  of  pyramids  and  Brooklyn  bridges. 

As  soon  as  the  miner  has  succeeded  in  working  his 
ore  he  knows,  in  terse  camp  language,  that  he  "  has 
a  mine,  and  not  a  hole  in  the  ground."  Then  he  begins 
to  "  develop  the  mine  " — that  is,  he  endeavours  to 
ascertain  its  value  and  put  it  into  shape  for  profitable 
working  by  explorations,  necessarily  very  expensive, 
and  by  planning  his  operations,  both  on  the  surface 
and  underground.  The  miners  burrow  their  way 
through  the  earth,  searching  for  precious  metals,  toiling 
through  barren  acres  for  weeks  and  months,  or  follow- 
ing threads  of  ore,  streaks  of  clay,  and  a  thousand 
"  indications  "  that  are  Greek  to  the  uninitiated,  but 
which  may  lead  at  last  to  a  rich  deposit.  They  are 
beset  by  perils  of  flood  and  fire,, of  explosion,  of  falling 
rocks,  of  the  collapse  of  roof,  sides,  or  floor  of  the 
narrow  places  in  which  they  toil.  And,  in  the  mining 
phrase,  "no  man  can  see  an  inch  ahead  of  the  end 
of  a  drift ";  no  diamond  drill  can  take  away  the  un- 
certainty of  the  business.  The  miner,  in  point  of  fact, 
is  turned  loose  in  the  heart  of  the  rocks  and  left  to 
creep  around  there  like  an  ant  in  a  mountain. 

The  Comstock,  though  called  a  lode,  is  really  a 
broad  metalliferous  belt  or  ore  channel.  It  contains 
many  narrow  lodes,  disjointed  strata,  bunches  and 
chimneys  of  ore,  in  distinct  clefts,  separated  from  each 
other  by  what  the  miners  call  "  horses  "  or  fragments 
of  rock  from  either  wall — fragments  often  a  thou- 
sand feet  long  and  several  hundred  feet  thick;  sepa- 
rated also  by  seams  and  patches  of  clay,  gypsum,  and 
carbonate  of  lime,  by  masses  of  quartz  and  dikes  of 
porphyry.  The  minerals  found  in  this  great  mass 
include  native  gold,  native  silver,  stephanite,  chloride 


GREAT  MECHANICAL  PROBLEMS  SOLVED.  93 

of  silver,  galena,  antimony,  and  several  rare  forms 
of  silver,  besides  zinc  blende,  iron  pyrites  and  copper 
pyrites.  The  whole  body,  constituting  what  miners 
call  a  vein,  or  vein  matter,  is  lodged  in  a  system  of  fis- 
sures rather  than  in  one  great  fissure,  and  is  walled 
in  on  the  west  by  granite-like  diorite  which  composes 
the  mass  of  Mount  Davidson  and  of  other  peaks  and 
ridges.  On  the  east  side  the  hanging  wall  is  diabase, 
which  resembles  basalt.  But  these  irregular  bounda- 
ries which  confine  the  vein  matter  are  merely  the 
shattered  edges  of  the  vast  chasm  rent  apart,  closed 
together,  and  again  forced  asunder  during  the  ages 
of  volcanic  action.  Under  interior  chemical  and  dy- 
namic agencies  reefs  of  quartz  a  hundred  feet  thick 
have  been  ground  to  dust,  and  the  whole  seething 
caldron  of  steam  and  fire,  filled  with  minerals  in  solu- 
tion, has  slowly  cooled  and  settled  into  its  present  con- 
dition. 

The  general  direction  of  the  vein  is  north  and  south, 
or  rather  it  points  a  little  east  of  the  magnetic  pole 
and  conforms  to  some  extent  to  the  trend  of  the  moun- 
tain. It  is  customary  to  include  about  twenty-two 
thousand  linear  feet  in  the  vein,  and  its  width  varies 
from  one  hundred  to  twelve  hundred  feet.  Some  of  the 
mines  in  this  territory  have  paid  largely,  others  have 
yielded  little,  and  the  fertile  portions  are  comparatively 
limited.  The  vein  was  at  first  found  to  slope  westward 
under  Mount  Davidson,  but  at  a  greater  depth  the 
slope  is  eastward  under  Virginia  City,  and  the  miners 
sank  a  second,  and  afterward  a  third,  series  of  shafts 
east  of  the  original  line  of  shafts.  In  some  cases  they 
ultimately  moved  three  thousand  feet  east  for  con- 
venience in  working  the  mines.  The  general  slope 
of  the  lode  toward  the  east  as  one  descends  is  fifty  de- 
grees. 


94:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

The  larger  mechanical  problems  connected  with 
any  mine  relate  to  reaching  and  removing  its  various 
ore  bodies;  to  preventing  caves,  fire,  and  other  acci- 
dents; to  efficient  lighting,  drainage,  and  ventilation; 
to  obtaining  in  abundance  the  two  essentials  of  mines, 
mills,  and  camps — wood  and  water;  and,  in  conclusion, 
to  the  creation,  maintenance,  and  constant  enlarge- 
ment of  the  whole  mining  enterprise  and  of  its  in- 
numerable dependent  industries,  until,  after  the  lapse 
of  years,  the  mine  or  group  of  mines  is  worked  out. 
One  can  easily  see  that  all  this  implies  the  constant 
existence  of  a  vast  reserve  force  at  or  near  every  min- 
ing centre.  .There  must  be  forges,  foundries,  machine 
shops,  sawmills,  upon  a  large  scale;  the  finest  special- 
ized talent  must  be  within  reach;  inventors  and  men 
of  original  power  are  in  demand,  for  not  only  fame 
and  fortune,  but  life  and  death  hang  on  the  issues  that 
an  hour  may  bring  forth.  That  which  is  needed  in 
a  great  mine  can  and  must  be  had.  "  Impossible  " 
was  never  written  in  the  miners'  dictionary. 

The  first  serious  mechanical  difficulty  that  the 
early  Comstockers  had  to  surmount  was  forced  upon 
them  within  a  year  or  two,  and  the  result  was  of  pro- 
found interest  to  miners-  everywhere.  Old  Ophir, 
which  had  "paid  from  grass  roots  down,"  soon  dis- 
carded the  hand  windlass  and  buckets  with  which 
it  had  started  and  put  in  a  horse  power,  or  "  whim." 
After  a  few  months  a  fifteen-horse-power  steam  engine 
was  obtained  to  pump  out  the  water  through  a  four- 
inch  pipe,  to  hoist  ore,  and  carry  men  up  and  down. 
This  engine  was  the  "  finest  thing  of  its  kind  on  the 
Comstock  "  when  it  began  operations. 

Meanwhile,  as  OplnYs  incline  slowly  descended,  the 
rich  vein  grew  wider  and  softer,  until  at  the  depth  of 
one  hundred  and  seventy-five  feet  it  was  forty  or  fifty 


GREAT  MECHANICAL  PROBLEMS  SOLVED.     95 

feet  across  and  of  so  crumbling  a  nature  that  pillars 
could  not  be  left  in  sufficient  numbers  to  support  the 
roof.  The  ore  body,  a  true  bonanza,  continued  to  widen 
as  it  descended,  and  soon  the  miners  found  it  impossible 
to  take  out  any  more  rock  without  extreme  danger. 
Work  was  finally  stopped  in  the  mine,  for  the  whole 
mass  of  vein  matter  and  overhanging  rock  was  slowly 
descending  upon  them.  If  the  contents  had  been  dia- 
monds instead  of  thousand-dollar  tons  of  ore,  the  miners 
could  not  have  taken  out  any  more  without  inventing 
some  new  system  of  operation.  The  engineers  were 
stumped  also;  there  was  no  record  of  such  a  width  of 
ore  in  any  of  the  mining  authorities. 

Of  course  there  had  been  timbering  done  from  the 
first.  Posts  and  lintels  had  been  used  in  shafts  and 
drifts.  In  this  system,  the  only  one  then  known,  round 
logs  were  set  up  at  the  sides,  and  another  log  was  placed 
across  them  at  the  top  as  a  cap.  These  frames  were 
put  as  close  together  as  possible,  making  a  continuous 
sheathing  of  pine  logs  a  foot  or  even  two  feet  thick 
from  the  surface  of  the  ground  to  the  bottom  of  the 
incline  and  along  every  portion  of  the  various  drifts. 
In  some  cases  the  logs  were  rudely  squared  and  then 
clamped  and  bolted  together  so  that  it  would  seem 
as  if  they  would  withstand  any  pressure.  In  ordinary 
mining  much  lighter  timbering  than  this  often  proves 
sufficient,  but  in  the  Comstock  the  great  width  and  the 
varying  density  of  the  vein  matter  made  the  slacking 
and  swelling  of  the  ground  something  unparalleled 
in  mining  history,  and  twisted  the  timbers  awry  in 
many  instances.  Besides,  the  miners  could  not  work 
above  or  beneath  such  timbers  without  danger  of  dead- 
ly caves.  Several,  in  fact,  occurred,  and  a  number  of 
lives  were  lost. 

In  this  emergency  a  German  miner  in  California, 


96  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

named  Philipp  Deidesheimer,  who  had  been  on  the 
Pacific  coast  since  1851,  came  to  the  rescue.  One  of 
the  San  Francisco  directors  of  Ophir,  sending  for  him, 
asked,  "  "What  would  you  do  if  you  had  a  quartz  lode 
fifty  or  sixty  feet  wide?  " 

Deidesheimer  replied  that  he  had  never  heard  of 
such  a  thing,  but  he  had  no  doubt  it  could  be  handled. 
He  would  like  to  study  the  place. 

"  Go  to  Virginia  City  to-morrow  at  our  expense," 
said  the  director. 

Deidesheimer  went  down  the  Ophir  shaft,  and 
within  a  month,  most  of  which  time  he  spent  under- 
ground in  various  tests  and  experiments,  he  began 
to  open  up  what  Ophir  miners  called  the  "  third  gal- 
lery," a  chamber  cut  in  the  vein  two  hundred  and  fif- 
teen feet  below  the  surface.  It  was  noised  about  that 
Ophir  was  about  to  try  a  new  system  of  timbering, 
and,  as  the  old  method  had  been  proved  inadequate 
in  other  mines,  the  men  stopped  work  and  came  up  to 
see  the  carpenters  framing  above  ground  the  "  square 
sets"  that  Mr.  Deidesheimer  ordered.  They  looked 
very  insignificant,  and  some  were  disposed  to  laugh 
at  the  performance. 

"  Square  sets  "  consist  of  short,  square  timbers,  four 
to  six  feet  long,  mortised  and  tenoned  at  the  ends  so 
that  they  can  be  put  together  in  a  series  of  interlocked 
cribs  and  built  up  in  a  continuous  row  or  block  to  any 
desired  height  or  width,  filling  the  whole  chamber 
as  fast  as  the  ore  is  removed.  By  using  diagonal  braces 
they  can  be  indefinitely  strengthened,  or  made  to  fill 
a  chamber  of  any  shape.  They  can  be  framed  together 
solidly,  as  is  often  done,  so  that  the  ore  is  replaced 
by  a  mass  of  lumber,  or  waste  rock  can  be  used  so  as 
to  make  solid  pillars  from  floor  to  roof,  or  even  to  fill 
the  entire  space.  By  February  the  Ophir  mines  were 


GREAT  MECHANICAL  PROBLEMS  SOLVED.  97 

successfully  "  stoping  out  ore  "  from  wall  to  wall  across 
a  deposit  which  was  sixty  feet  in  width  and  yet  was 
so  soft  that  no  blasting  was  required.  By  the  time 
the  sixth  gallery  was  reached  a  space  two  hundred 
feet  in  length,  sixty-five  feet  wide,  and  five  hundred 
and  sixty  feet  in  depth  had  been  emptied  of  ore  and 
was  kept  from  falling  by  means  of  the  square-sets  sys- 
tem of  support.  Beyond  a  doubt  "  square  sets  "  could 
often  be  used  to  support  the  roofs  of  coal-mines,  where 
so  many  caves  occur  when  the  whole  vein  is  removed. 

German,  English,  and  French  engineers  came  from 
Europe  to  examine  and  report  upon  the  new  Corn- 
stock  system  of  working  ore  bodies.  They  declared 
that  it "  could  no  more  be  improved  upon  than  the  cells 
of  a  honeybee."  In  soft  rock  and  hard  rock,  at  any 
angle  or  across  any  distance,  the  square  sets  became 
indispensable  to  all  miners  working  large  ore  bodies. 
The  idea  was  never  patented,  and  so  it  became  the  com- 
mon property  of  mining  men  the  world  over.  It  was 
the  first  of  the  famous  Comstock  methods  that  gave 
the  lode  a  reputation. 

But  although  every  one  recognised  the  importance 
of  Mr.  Deidesheimer's  invention,  which  at  a  single 
stroke  had  solved  the  first  practical  difficulty  that  con- 
fronted the  early  miners,  his  system  was  often  careless- 
ly and  grudgingly  used.  Cave  after  cave  occurred, 
filling  up  the  excavations,  crushing  men  and  timbers 
together,  and  rending  the  surface  of  the  earth  into 
chasms.  None  of  these  caves  occurred  in  Ophir,  of 
which  Deidesheimer  was  now  superintendent. 

The  dangers  that  were  obviated  by  the  proper  use 
of  the  square-set  timbers  are  well  exhibited  in  these 
early  caves.  Few  occurred  in  1861,  but  in  the  spring 
of  1862,  when  the  snows  melted  and  the  surface  waters 
of  the  Comstock  increased  in  volume,  clumsy  super- 


98  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

intendents  suffered,  for  a  number  of  mines  were 
closed  by  falling  debris,  clay,  and  rock.  A  few  mine 
owners  heeded  the  warning  and  put  in  better  timbering 
when  the  drifts  were  cleared.  Mexican — which,  as 
previously  noted,  was  very  old-fashioned  in  its  meth- 
ods— became  in  the  summer  of  1863,  as  the  Territorial 
Enterprise  said,  "  a  lovely  chaos."  One  half  the  sur- 
face of  the  mine  fell  with  a  frightful  clamour  which 
roused  Virginia  City,  and  an  acre  of  the  surface  was 
opened  to  the  depth  of  nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty 
feet,  as  if  dynamite  had  been  exploded  underneath. 
There  had  been  incessant  and  unmistakable  warnings 
for  weeks  and  months;  the  workmen  had  reported 
props  twisted  and  bent,  cap  timbers  broken,  and  dull 
noises  of  yielding  earth  and  quartz.  The  superin- 
tendent and  twenty  miners  were  below,  but,  fortunate- 
ly, were  near  the  bottom  of  the  incline,  and  so  escaped, 
while  the  enormous  mass,  already  beginning  to  fall, 
had  half  closed  the  passages. 

While  the  miners  were  learning  how  to  protect 
their  shafts,  drifts,  tunnels,  chambers,  and  various 
underground  workings,  the  enemy  of  all  miners — water 
— was  becoming  the  chief  obstacle.  Noachian  del- 
uges of  water,  seeping  continually  out  of  every  part 
of  the  porous  vein  matter  which  received  the  drain- 
age of  the  mountains,  threatened  to  compel  the  aban- 
donment of  the  Comstock,  as  a  similar  reason  had 
caused  the  ruin  of  some  of  the  most  productive  min- 
ing districts  of  Spain,  Mexico,  and  Peru.  Durango's 
famous  Real  del  Monte  mine  was  flooded  for  fifty 
years.  The  other  day,  in  California,  a  mine  was  pumped 
out  which  had  lain  useless  since  1860,  and  it  is  now 
yielding  at  the  rate  of  $50,000  a  year. 

By  1861  Ophir  had  a  pumping  engine  of  forty-five 
horse  power  to  raise  the  water  to  a  point  where  it  could 


GREAT  MECHANICAL  PROBLEMS  SOLVED.     99 

be  discharged  through  a  tunnel,  and  ten  or  twelve  other 
pumping  engines  were  on  the  lode  then  or  soon  after. 
The  miners  had  learned  to  avoid  as  far  as  possible  the 
wetter  points  of  the  lode  and  the  water  reservoirs  in 
clay,  but  this  system  of  creeping  past  the  worst  places 
could  only  be  a  temporary  expedient.  Sometimes  the 
careless  stroke  of  a  pick  cut  into  a  "  water  pocket "  and 
forced  the  men  to  run  from  the  drift,  pursued  by  a  tor- 
rent. Large  areas  of  profitable  mining  ground  were 
neglected  through  fear  of  the  water,  and  sometimes 
drifts  had  to  be  closed  by  walls  of  masonry.  Fortu- 
nately, at  this  stage  of  affairs  the  water  was  compara- 
tively cold,  not  boiling;,  as  afterward  on  the  lower 
levels. 

Larger  pumps  were  placed  on  the  leading  mines. 
Best  and  Belcher,  in  1864,  bought  a  pump  of  twelve 
inches  bore,  and  were  then  able  to  reopen  some  of  their 
underground  works.  Crown  Point,  Overman,  Ophir, 
Justice,  Uncle  Sam,  and  Yellow  Jacket  won  unde- 
Bired  pre-eminence  as  "  wet  mines."  Ophir  struck  a 
water  pocket  in  1864  that  rose  one  hundred  and  sixty 
feet  in  the  shafts  and  long  defied  the  pumps.  Belcher, 
when  lifting  1,017,878  gallons  every  twenty-four  hours, 
found  the  pumps  too  weak  to  extend  work  below  the 
420-foot  level.  Engines  of  five  hundred  horse  power 
were  put  into  operation,  and  the  finest  inventive  skill 
of  the  Pacific  coast  was  called  into  service. 

There  came  a  time  when  eight  or  ten  million  gallons 
must  be  lifted  daily  from  the  Comstock.  More  power- 
ful pumping  machinery  than  ever  before  used  in  the 
history  of  mining  was  constructed  to  drain  the  lode. 
The  iron  works  of  San  Francisco  became  known  for 
the  excellence  and  originality  of  their  mining  ma- 
chinery. Comstock  pumps,  by  a  number  of  successive 
adaptations  and  small  inventions  rather  than  by  any 
8 


100  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

single  epoch-marking  discovery,  reached  the  highest 
degree  of  efficiency  known  to  engineers. 

Pioneer  Virginia  City  had  numbers  of  wells  and 
a  little  water  from  springs.  Some  of  the  wells  were 
soon  drained  dry  by  the  mining  shafts  and  tunnels. 
In  the  local  phrase,  the  "  bottom  fell  out/'  and  the 
term  was  soon  applied  to  any  sudden  collapse  in  the 
stock  market.  There  were  instances  on  record  of  men 
who  were  drawing  water  in  their  back  yards  being 
surprised  at  seeing  the  water  suddenly  disappear  in 
a  chasm  or  crevice,  some  drift  or  "upraise"  in  the 
vast  underground  world  of  the  Comstockers  having 
tapped  the  reservoir.  The  springs  in  the  district,  small 
and  few  in  number,  suffered  in  much  the  same  way. 

Even  the  surface  water  of  Gold  Hill  and  Virginia 
City  was  abominable,  even  to  those  used  to  the  bitter 
water  of  the  desert.  It  "  alkalied  people  "  in  the  con- 
cise southwest  phrase — that  is,  it  often  made  them 
weak,  and  acted  something  like  a  dose  of  physic.  One 
or  two  surface  springs  fed  by  snows  were  better,  but 
these  were  very  small;  and  as  for  the  water  from  wells, 
nothing  could  easily  be  worse  except  the  water  from 
the  lower  levels  of  the  mines.  Ross  Browne,  in  his 
Peep  at  Washoe,  remarked  that  the  water  was  certainly 
the  worst  ever  used  by  man.  The  miners,  humbly  de- 
sirous of  improving  the  quality  of  their  drinks,  used 
to  mix  "  a  spoonful  of  water  with  half  a  tumblerful  of 
whisky." 

Evidently  the  highly  mineralized  vein  matter  of 
the  great  fissures,  such  as  the  Comstock  and  others, 
was  more  or  less  a  part  of  every  cup  of  water.  The 
dream  of  the  alchemists  of  silver  and  of  gold  in  potable 
form  was  realized,  and  still  the  Comstockers  were  not 
happy.  Antimony,  copperas,  arsenic,  and  a  few  other 
substances  quite  as  injurious  to  health  were  present 


GREAT  MECHANICAL  PROBLEMS  SOLVED.  101 

in  the  water.  Nevada  papers  printed  innumerable 
items,  grave  and  gay,  on  the  subject  of  Virginia  City 
water.  They  assured  the  ladies  that  nothing  else  was 
half  so  good  for  the  complexion  as  arsenic  water;  they 
congratulated  the  men  on  their  improved  lungs  and 
capacity  to  climb  to  the  top  of  Mount  Davidson  (like 
so  many  young  Malcolm  Graemes  breasting  Ben 
Lomond). 

Then  followed,  to  make  a  long  story  short,  a  search 
for  water  of  good  quality  and  abundant  in  quantity. 
It  must  be  had  at  any  cost.  When  there  were  only 
two  or  three  thousand  people  in  Virginia  City  and 
along  the  divide,  men  were  tapping  the  adjacent  peaks 
with  short  tunnels,  trying  to  find  water.  When  the 
population  increased  tenfold  and  twentyfold  the  prob- 
lem was  even  more  pressing.  A  "  water-claim  "  excite- 
ment had  set  in,  until  hundreds  of  men  were  prospect- 
ing in  the  hills  to  find  and  reservoir  water.  They 
searched  the  flat-topped  hills  and  heads  of  ravines; 
they  tried  to  save  water  from  the  melting  snows  and 
keep  it  pure  and  cool  for  summer  use.  Miles  upon 
miles  of  tunnels  were  blasted  out  of  the  granite  and 
other  hard  rocks  and  walled  up  at  their  entrances.  Old 
shafts,  long  abandoned,  were  also  utilized  as  reservoirs. 
The  barren,  treeless  hills  north  and  south  along  the 
ridge  of  the  Washoe  Mountains  were  bored  into  in 
this  manner,  and  the  water  from  a  thousand  such 
sources  was  carried  in  pipes  or  small  wooden  flumes  to 
Gold  Hill  and  Virginia  City.  Nevertheless,  the  supply 
fell  short  every  summer,  and  the  natural  reservoirs 
of  water  in  the  hills  appeared  to  lessen  very  noticeably 
until  the  situation  became  even  more  serious. 

While  mills,  mines,  and  growing  towns  were  suffer- 
ing for  a  pure  and  sufficient  water  supply,  the  Sierras 
were  overflowing  with  pure  mountain  water,  and 


102  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

thither  the  energies  and  capital  of  the  Comstock 
were  to  be  directed.  For  a  time  the  project,  though 
often  urged,  lay  dormant.  At  length,  after  a  season 
of  extraordinary  drought,  the  miners,  accustomed  by 
this  time  to  daring  enterprises,  formed  a  company 
and  began  surveys  to  the  Lake  Tahoe  region. 

The  complete  story  extends  over  a  long  period, 
but  it  properly  belongs  here,  as  the  culminating  achieve- 
ment in  the  line  of  mechanical  problems.  Distance, 
though  about  twenty-five  miles  over  a  rough  country, 
was  the  least  of  the  different  elements  to  be  considered 
by  the  engineers.  They  found  that  it  was  practicable 
to  carry  the  water  from  a  large  mountain  stream,  Ho- 
bart  Creek,  by  a  fourteen-mile  flume  along  a  spur  of 
the  Sierras,  to  a  point  nearly  two  thousand  feet  above 
the  floor  of  Washoe  Valley.  But  Washoe,  Carson,  and 
other  valleys  formed  a  complete  chain  of  depressions 
about  the  Virginia  City  region,  and  isolated  the  Washoe 
and  Flowery  ranges.  They  wanted  to  carry  the  water 
across  this  trough-like  valley  and  deliver  it  at  a  point 
1,720  feet  higher,  on  the  Virginia  Eidge,  so  as  to  sup- 
ply the  towns  and  furnish  hydraulic  power.  Clearly 
it  was  not  practicable  to  pump  nearly  eighteen  hundred 
feet,  as  the  cost  of  the  machinery  and  expenses  of  opera- 
tion would  be  prohibitory.  Mr.  Henry  Schiissler  there- 
fore advised  the  construction  of  an  inverted  siphon 
which  could  stand  a  pressure  of  eight  hundred  pounds 
to  the  square  inch,  the  equivalent  of  a  perpendicular 
pressure  of  a  column  of  1,720  feet  of  water.  Pipe  sec- 
tions twelve  inches  in  interior  diameter  had  to  be  united 
hermetically.  The  length  required  to  cross  the  valley 
was  38,300  feet. 

It  took  a  year  to  make  the  pipe.  Each  section  fitted 
a  particular  place.  Every  curve  and  angle*  of  the  route 
was  mapped  out  and  measured  accurately,  and  the 


GEEAT  MECHANICAL  PROBLEMS  SOLVED.  103 

wrought  iron  used  corresponded  perfectly  with  the 
diagram  before  it  left  the  workshops.  The  pipe  un- 
dulates into  and  out  of  thirteen  steep  gulches,  and 
makes  many  lateral  curves.  It  is  laid  deep  under- 
ground, and  at  each  point  of  depression  there  is  a 
"  blow- off  "  cock,  to  drive  out  any  sediment.  On  the 
top  of  each  ridge  is  an  air  cock.  There  are  1,150,000 
pounds  of  rolled  iron  in  the  seven  miles  required  for  the 
siphon,  and  it  is  held  together  by  about  a  million  rivets 
and  fifty-two  thousand  pounds  of  melted  lead.  Over 
each  joint  is  an  iron  band  set  with  molten  lead,  and 
442,500  additional  pounds  of  iron  were  used  in  this 
way. 

At  last,  in  1873,  water  leaped  out  of  the  pipe  into 
the  channel  of  Bullion  Eavine  and  flowed  into  a  flume 
that  carried  it  into  Virginia  City.  "  The  crowd  were 
as  wild  with  joy  as  were  the  Israelites  when  Moses  smote 
the  rock,"  said  the  Territorial  Enterprise.  All  day 
long  the  people  of  the  towns  drank  the  sweet  water 
and  watched  its  musical  flowing.  Two  million  dollars 
had  been  well  spent  to  supply  the  Comstock  with  water 
from  the  Sierras.  The  total  amount  furnished  was 
about  two  million  gallons  daily,  but  it  was  insufficient, 
and  after  the  great  fire  of  1875  a  second  siphon  line 
was  laid.  A  third  line  was  afterward  constructed  and 
ample  reservoirs  provided.  The  theoretical  capacity 
of  all  three  pipes  is  about  ten  million  gallons  daily, 
curiously  corresponding  to  the  amount  of  water  lifted 
at  times  from  the  lode,  but  six  million  gallons  was 
about  the  highest  daily  consumption.  The  mines 
used  the  larger  part  of  the  supply. 

Previous  to  the  successful  laying  of  the  first  Washoe 
Valley  siphon  the  greatest  pressure  under  which  water 
had  ever  been  carried,  so  far  as  known,  was  at  Cherokee 
Flat,  California,  where  the  supply  of  a  large  hydraulic 


104:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

mine  was  taken  across  a  canon  nine  hundred  and  ten 
feet  deep  by  an  inverted  siphon.  The  fame  of  the  Vir- 
ginia City  exploit  went  abroad  and  attracted  more  en- 
gineers to  study  the  water  system  than  even  the  mine 
timbering  or  the  great  Comstock  pumps. 

Thus,  while  the  miners  were  laboriously  running 
drainage  tunnels  and  pumping  out  floods  of  worthless 
water,  they  were  also  siphoning  their  drinking  water 
from  the  Sierras,  and  in  such  a  manner  that  several 
hundred  feet  of  fall  was  obtained  for  the  develop- 
ment of  hydraulic  power,  all  of  which  was  soon  utilized 
to  run  pumps,  to  furnish  electric  lights,  and  for  a  vast 
number  of  milling  and  mining  purposes. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

DEPENDENT    INDUSTRIES. 

IT  is  difficult  to  classify  all  the  different  types  of 
men  who  help  to  make  a  mining  camp.  Certainly  the 
prospector,  the  miner,  and  the  mill  builder  form  the 
central  group,  but  hardly  less  important  and  equally  in- 
teresting are  the  freighter,  the  lumberman,  the  builder 
of  roads,  the  stage  driver,  and  others  who  deserve  more 
than  passing  notice.  One  can  hardly  say  which  of  these 
comes  first  in  point  of  time.  The  mines  needed  lumber 
and  firewood  from  the  day  of  their  discovery.  Build- 
ing of  roads  began  at  the  same  time,  and  freighting 
and  stage  driving  were  easy  to  men  who  had  taken 
trains  of  donkeys  and  pack  mules  across  the  Sierras 
when  the  rush  to  Washoe  began. 

All  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1859  new  trails  were 
being  hewn  out  on  the  sides  of  the  Sierras  and  the  old 
ones  were  being  broadened  so  that  a  wagon  could  cross. 
The  famous  old  emigrant  road  through  Johnson's 
Pass  from  the  head  of  Carson  Valley  to  Placerville  (in 
old  days  known  as  Hangtown)  had  once  been  worn 
down  to  something  like  a  practicable  grade,  but  travel 
along  it  diminished  so  rapidly  after  1855  that  much 
of  it  had  fallen  into  very  bad  condition.  The  second 
great  route,  already  marked  out  by  a  road  that  could 
be  used  in  summer,  was  by  way  of  Nevada  City  and 
Henness  Pass. 

During  1860  the  usual  method  of  the  miners  who 
105 


106  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

wished  to  open  a  new  district  rapidly — the  building  of 
toll  roads — was  adopted.  In  fact  there  had  been  a 
little  toll-road  work  in  Western  Utah  before  1859, 
and  the  greater  number  of  the  fine  mountain  roads 
of  California  in  the  ?50's  and  ?60's  were  built  and  kept 
up  by  private  enterprise.  Some  of  them  were  more 
profitable  than  most  of  the  mines.  The  Territory  of 
Nevada  had  hardly  been  organized  before  a  fierce  con- 
test between  those  who  desired  toll-road  franchises 
occupied  the  first  session  of  the  Legislature.  Dan  De 
Quille  said  that  if  all  these  franchises  had  been  granted 
and  the  roads  built,  they  would  have  not  only  filled 
the  Territory,  but  would  have  hung  far  out  into  the 
desert  like  a  fringe. 

Neither  California  nor  Nevada  has  since  had  moun- 
tain roads  under  the  ordinary  laws  of  public  construc- 
tion and  maintenance,  by  local  districts  or  counties, 
that  begin  to  equal  the  firm,  broad  turnpikes  of  the 
old  toll-road  days.  This  is  true  even  in  those  districts 
where  the  population  has  remained  fully  equal  to  that 
of  thirty  years  ago.  The  noble  art  of  making  high- 
ways worthy  of  the  alpine  passes  was  lost  when  the 
teamster  and  the  freighter  disappeared. 

The  main  Placerville  toll  road  in  the  days  of  its 
completeness — from  1862  till  1868 — was  graded  with 
consummate  skill  from  the  edge  of  the  Sacramento 
Valley  across  the  Sierras,  across  the  Carson,  and  up 
Gold  Canon  to  Virginia  City.  At  all  the  turning  points 
were  wide  platforms  walled  with  stones,  firmly  but- 
tressed against  storm  and  avalanche — platforms  so  broad 
that  a  ten-mule  team  could  easily  turn  upon  them. 
Trains  of  twelve  or  even  eighteen  animals  harnessed 
to  three  wagons  joined  in  line  together  could  pass  at 
any  point  on  the  roadway.  Half  a  million  dollars 
was  the  original  cost  of  this  macadamized  road  a  hun- 


DEPENDENT  INDUSTRIES.  107 

dred  and  one  miles  long  from  Placerville  to  Virginia 
City.  The  yearly  expense  of  maintenance  was  two, 
three,  or  sometimes  five  thousand  dollars  a  mile,  accord- 
ing to  the  season.  Stations  were  built  at  regular  dis- 
tances, and  in  winter  the  road  was  kept  as  clear  from 
snow-drifts  as  it  was  kept  free  from  dust  in  summer. 
Swan  &  Co.,  who  owned  some  twenty  miles  of  the  dis- 
tance, received  fifty  thousand  dollars  annually  over  and 
above  the  cost  of  maintenance.  The  total  cost  of  tolls 
between  Sacramento  City  and  Virginia  City  in  1863  was 
about  fifteen  dollars  for  a  four-horse  team;  each  addi- 
tional animal  cost  a  dollar  and  a  half. 

Between  1860  and  1862  four-mule  teams  were  com- 
monly seen,  but  after  1862  the  number  increased,  for 
the  roads  improved  and  the  teamsters  knew  their  busi- 
ness better.  One  saw  sixteen  mules  harnessed  to  a  high 
Washoe  wagon  or  to  a  train  of  three  or  four  wagons 
coupled  together.  Similar  outfits  often  extended  for 
miles  in  such  close  lines  across  the  highway  that  it 
was  like  a  double  procession.  If  a  wagon  broke  down, 
the  moving  line  swung  around  it  if  possible  and  went 
on  unless  help  was  needed.  If  an  unlucky  teamster 
fell  out  of  line  he  sometimes  had  to  wait  for  hours  be- 
fore he  could  fall  in  again. 

Four  hundred  teams  were  being  used  in  1860;  six 
hundred  were  engaged  in  1861;  by  the  summer  of 
1862  the  San  Francisco  Bulletin  said  that  there  were 
nine  hundred  and  fifty  teams  in  the  business,  and  the 
freighters  were  paid  not  less  than  three  million  dollars, 
including  tolls.  In  1863  came  a  great  increase.  Ac- 
cording to  an  editorial  in  the  Sacramento  Union,  2,772 
teams,  consisting  of  14,652  animals,  were  employed, 
and  nearly  twenty  million  pounds  of  freight  passed 
through  Strawberry  Valley  in  eight  weeks,  which  rep- 
resents one  third  of  the  season's  work.  Another  esti- 


108  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

mate  was  that  eighty-eight  million  pounds  of  freight 
went  over  Johnson's  Pass  every  year,  at  an  average 
cost  of  six  cents  a  pound,  or  $5,280,000.  A  more  com- 
plete estimate  was  made  by  the  builders  of  the  Central 
Pacific  Railroad.  Anxious  to  determine  how  much 
business  they  could  reasonably  expect  when  their  lines 
crossed  the  Sierras,  they  sent  out  agents  who,  after  in- 
vestigation, thought  that  one  hundred  million  pounds 
really  went  by  the  Placerville  route  and  half  as  much 
by  the  other  routes.  Fifteen  thousand  draught  animals 
and  three  thousand  men  were  employed  in  this  great 
industry.  Nearly  a  hundred  stations,  at  each  one  of 
which  there  were  stables,  hotels,  saloons,  and  stores, 
were  built  on  the  Placerville  route.  The  road  was  a 
continuous  double  line  of  close-packed  travel  all  sum- 
mer, and  life  on  the  famous  highway  was  infinitely 
more  picturesque  than  on  any  railroad. 

These  trains  of  mountain  wagons — slow-moving, 
vast — contained  dry  goods,  provisions,  tools,  machinery, 
and  merchandise  of  all  descriptions  produced  in  every 
part  of  the  world,  shipped  to  San  Francisco  across  the 
Isthmus  or  around  Cape  Horn,  reshipped  to  Sacra- 
mento, and  there  loaded  into  the  waiting  caravans. 
It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  swiftly  developing  traffic  made 
towns  and  cities  spring  up  in  a  single  season  along 
its  track.  But  there  was  more  to  the  business  than 
this  single  river  of  commerce  flowing  through  the 
Golden  Gate  to  Nevada.  It  was  a  river  that  received 
countless  tributaries.  It  was  fed  ceaselessly  by  almost 
every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  ten  thousand  square 
miles  of  mountains.  The  mines  made  a  better  market 
than  the  valleys  for  hay  and  grain,  for  fruit  and  wine, 
for  hogs  and  cattle,  for  eggs  and  poultry.  Neglected 
pioneer  orchards  and  vineyards  were  pruned  and  culti- 
vated, so  that  the  grapes,  apples,  peaches,  and  other 


DEPENDENT  INDUSTRIES.  109 

products  of  old-time  California  horticulture  might  be 
sent  to  the  new  camps  of  Nevada,  where  they  brought 
almost  the  old  prices  of  '49. 

The  appearance  of  Washoe  wagon  trains  was  always 
extremely  striking  and  attractive.  The  wagons  were 
peculiarly  effective  for  the  work  required.  They  were 
not  prairie  schooners,  or  ships  of  the  desert,  or  square- 
built  ore  wagons,  but  better,  stronger,  higher  than  any 
of  these,  and  supplied  with  brake  blocks  that  could 
be  gripped  by  a  lever  upon  a  yard  or  more  of  the  pe- 
riphery of  each  hind  wheel.  They  marked  in  every 
detail  the  utmost  skill  of  the  Pacific-coast  workers  in 
wood  and  iron,  and  were  in  their  way  as  distinct  cre- 
ations of  adaptive  and  evolutionary  genius  as  the  moun- 
tain stagecoach  of  the  period  or  the  Mississippi  Kiver 
steamboat  in  days  before  railroads.  Of  course  many 
different  types  of  wagons  were  pressed  into  service, 
the  demand  being  so  great,  and  one  could  see  the  famous 
Conemaughs,  Missouri  sail-tops,  lumbering  ranch 
wagons,  and  other  types  of  Eastern  manufacture.  But 
the  wrought  iron  of  the  California  blacksmith,  the 
imported  ash  and  hickory  shaped  by  the  California 
carpenter  under  the  direction  of  the  leading  spirits 
of  the  freighting  business,  made  the  most  popular  com- 
bination, though  it  cost  two  and  three  times  as  much 
as  the  imported  article. 

Horses  could  not  stand  the  work,  oxen  were  too 
slow;  but  large,  well-bred  mules,  which  cost  from  two 
hundred  to  four  hundred  dollars  apiece,  were  the  fa- 
vourite draught  animals.  Oregon  furnished  many,  and 
stock  farms  in  the  California  valleys,  chiefly  owned  by 
.Southerners  who  selected  their  stock  with  great  care, 
sold  thousands  of  mules  to  the  Sierra  teamsters.  Fine, 
strong  animals,  kept  constantly  groomed  and  in  the 
best  possible  condition,  were  in  these  mountain  mule 


110  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

teams.  The  long  trains  came  gaily  into  Virginia  City 
after  crossing  the  Sierras  and  climbing  up  from  Car- 
son Valley.  Each  animal  had  a  row  of  small  bright 
bells  hanging  from  an  iron  arch  over  his  neck.  Great 
squares  of  combed  and  glossy  bearskin — black,  brown, 
or  grizzly — covered  the  collars.  All  the  metal  of  the 
harness  glistened  in  the  sunlight,  while  the  leather  was 
clean,  flexible,  and  black. 

Bearded,  weather-beaten  men  walked  beside  the 
wagons  or  rode  one  of  the  mules,  or  sat  at  times  on 
high,  perched  dizzily  on  the  wagon  seat  above  the  tar- 
paulins which  were  always  strapped  carefully  over  the 
goods  to  prevent  their  being  injured  by  dust  or  by  sud- 
den Sierra  storms.  Mark  them  well!  No  better  race  of 
sturdy,  faithful  mountain  men  were  ever  bred  in  fruit- 
ful America.  Not  merchants  these,  or  prospectors,  or 
speculators,  but  a  brave,  honest  outdoor  race  whose 
huge  Washoe  wagons  were  the  forerunners  of  the  rail- 
roads. It  was  their  business  to  furnish  supplies  to  the 
miners  and  to  all  who  lived  by  the  work  of  the  mines, 
but  many  of  them  went  through  all  those  pioneer  years 
without  ever  entering  a  mine  or  owning  a  dollar's  worth 
of  stock  in  any  one  of  the  thousands  of  mining  claims 
they  passed  and  repassed. 

Where  this  army  of  freighters  came  from  no  one 
could  tell  any  more  than  one  could  classify  the  pros- 
pectors. A  large  number,  however,  had  been  the 
owners  of  mountain  ranches  before  the  rush  to  Washoe 
began,  and  had  taken  their  own  teams  for  the  new  work 
offered.  Then,  as  their  capital  increased,  they  bought 
better  wagons,  better  teams,  and  so  still  remained  their 
own  masters,  occasionally  hiring  assistance  or  having 
outfits  to  rent,  but  always  taking  the  brunt  of  the  work 
on  their  own  shoulders.  Some  of  them  were  from  the 
desert,  where  they  had  freighted  goods  for  years  to 


DEPENDENT  INDUSTRIES.  HI 

the  isolated  settlements;  some  were  from  the  high 
passes  of  the  Eockies  and  had  heard  the  whistle  of 
Indian  arrows  in  fortress-like  camps  with  fellow-team- 
sters, wagon  locked  with  wagon,  a  ring  of  wheels  set 
with  rifle  barrels.  A  few  gray  and  taciturn  old  freight- 
ers had  once  belonged  to  that  fighting  advance  guard 
of  the  Americans,  the  famous  teamsters  of  the  New 
Orleans  and  St.  Louis  caravans  on  the  old  Santa  Fe 
trail. 

These  freighters  were  noted  for  their  honesty,  so- 
briety, and  business-like  attention  to  every  detail. 
Each  one  of  them  had  thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of 
goods  intrusted  to  his  care  without  security  other  than 
his  simple  receipt.  He  carried  these  goods  to  the  mines 
and  delivered  them  to  the  consignees,  taking  their 
receipts.  If  there  was  ore  to  be  freighted  back  across 
the  mountains,  he  loaded  up  at  the  mouth  of  the  mine, 
gave  the  mine  owner  his  receipt,  and  took  one  in 
turn  from  the  Sacramento  banker  or  the  speculator  iu 
ores. 

The  freighter's  characteristic  rod  of  empire  was 
his  whip — a  long,  close-plaited  lash  as  big  as  one's  wrist 
at  the  swelling  part,  and  attached  to  a  short  hickory 
handle.  When  he  held  the  staff  upright  and  slowly 
waved  it  from  the  roadside  the  intelligent  leaders  would 
obey  every  motion,  turn  a  loaded  wagon  or  halt  at  the 
command,  for  they  knew  by  sad  experience  the  capacity 
for  inflicting  punishment  that  lay  hidden  in  that  ser- 
pentine coil,  terrible  as  a  South  African  jambok  of 
green  hippopotamus  hide.  The  freighter's  besetting 
sin,  like  the  soldier's,  was  the  uttering  of  "strange 
oaths,"  though  it  is  said  that  in  this  respect  he  yielded 
the  palm  of  fierce  originality  to  the  "bull-puncher," 
the  man  of  ox  teams  in  the  logging  camps. 

Organization  soon  began  to  manifest  itself  among 


112  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

the  freighters.  They  had  an  association  to  fix  rates 
before  the  close  of  1860,  when  twenty-five  cents  a 
pound  was  the  usual  sum  charged  between  Sacramento 
and  Virginia  City.  Eates  necessarily  came  down,  as 
outsiders  entered  the  business  with  all  sorts  of  convey- 
ances, so  that  for  a  short  time  in  1862  goods  were 
hauled  for  two  cents  a  pound.  But  the  freighters, 
nearly  all  of  them  owning  their  own  teams,  soon  formed 
a  Union  that  remained  impregnable  until  the  railroad 
was  built.  The  equipments  of  the  members  of  the  asso- 
ciation were  so  complete  that  they  could  do  better  work 
than  any  ordinary  teamsters.  At  first  they  were 
able  to  haul  a  thousand  pounds  of  freight  for  every 
animal  used,  but  eventually  they  became  able  to  move 
three  times  as  much — sixteen-mule  teams  actually  drew 
twenty-four  tons  besides  the  wagons. 

In  the  course  of  time,  as  mining  camps  were 
founded  here,  there,  and  everywhere  beyond  Virginia 
City  north,  south,  and  east,  the  sphere  of  the  freighter 
was  extended,  and  retiring  slowly  from  the  Sierras 
as  the  railroad  advanced,  he  became  one  of  the  most 
distinctive  and  universal  characters  of  the  Nevada 
mining  districts.  Dr.  Gaily  has  forever  fixed  the  type 
in  his  Big  Jack  Small,  a  famous  story  of  the  desert, 
whose  hero  is  a  plain  old  ore  freighter  of  the  Elko  silver 
district.  Considered  as  pure  literature,  the  story  is 
not  inferior  to  Bret  Harte's  earlier  tales  of  the  Cali- 
fornia placer  camps;  regarded  simply  as  crystallized 
fact,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  its  equal  in  the  whole 
range  of  Western  writings.  The  school  of  the  inde- 
pendent freighter — the  Jack  Small  kind  of  a  man — 
trained  some  of  the  most  able  business  men,  politicians 
and  owners  of  stock  farms,  on  the  Pacific  coast.  Last- 
ly, it  is  to  be  noted,  in  bidding  the  freighter  farewell, 
that  stage  robbers  and  highwaymen  stood  in  deadly 


DEPENDENT  INDUSTRIES.  113 

fear  of  his  six-shooter  and  rifle.  So  far  as  I  can  ascer- 
tain, no  case  of  loss  of  goods  in  transit,  either  by  fraud, 
force,  or  carelessness,  during  all  the  years  of  the  freight- 
ers' glory  is  on  record  in  courts  or  newspapers. 

Besides  the  freighter,  the  great  mountain  high- 
ways fairly  swarmed  with  travel  of  other  sort:  men  on 
horseback  or  in  baggies  and  other  conveyances;  farmers 
with  country  produce;  the  blanket-brigade  prospectors 
with  pack  donkeys;  drovers  with  sheep,  hogs,  and 
cattle.  All  were  interesting,  but  the  stages,  owned 
by  different  companies  and  making  a  business  of  tak- 
ing people  to  and  from  Washoe,  were  the  most  strik- 
ing features  of  the  procession. 

One  stage  company,  the  Pioneer  Line,  owned 
twelve  fine  coaches  in  1863,  and  carried  nearly  twelve 
thousand  passengers  from  California  to  Nevada  and 
eight  thousand  back  to  California.  The  fare  was 
twenty-seven  dollars  from  Sacramento  to  Virginia  City 
by  the  Placerville  route.  The  annual  receipts  were 
about  five  hundred  and  forty  thousand  dollars,  besides 
a  liberal  United  States  allowance  for  carrying  mails. 
Six  or  seven  hundred  horses  were  in  the  stables,  and 
scores  of  men  were  employed  in  caring  for  them.  The 
stage  drivers  were  aristocrats  of  the  road,  receiving 
from  two  hundred  to  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a 
month  besides  unlimited  adulation. 

Two  other  companies,  the  California  and  the 
Nevada,  used  the  Hehness  Pass  route,  and  carried  be- 
tween them  about  as  many  passengers  as  the  Pioneer 
Line.  Now  and  then  competing  lines  were  put  on,  but 
as  the  first  companies  in  the  field  had  taken  possession 
of  most  of  the  possible  locations  for  stage  stations, 
they  held  a  practical  monopoly  of  the  business.  In 
1863  the  three  companies  received  about  $1,200,000, 
and  the  annual  amount  probably  increased  consider- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

ably  above  this  figure  before  the  staging  era  came  to 
an  end. 

The  stage  ride  across  the  Sierras  became  known 
abroad  as  one  of  the  New  World's  unique  pleasures. 
Tourists  admired  it  greatly  and  called  it  the  glory  of 
the  journey  across  the  continent.  First  the  rich  Sacra- 
mento Valley  in  the  heat  of  summer,  golden  with  har- 
vests for  miles  under  the  park-like  forests  of  giant 
oaks,  and  beside  the  rivers  lined  with  maples,  cotton- 
woods,  sycamores,  and  festooned  with  wild  grapes;  next 
the  foothills,  low-mounded,  clothed  with  late  flowers, 
shrubs,  and  scattered  trees,  full  of  springs  and  bright 
with  fruitful  orchards  and  gay  gardens;  then  the  forest 
belt,  the  noble  coniferous  forests  of  the  Sierras,  the 
pines  and  cedars,  the  scattered  groups  of  Sequoias,  the 
mountain  laurel,  ceanothus,  azalea,  dogwood,  and  won- 
derful natural  growths  of  the  Great  Eange.  Every- 
where new  landscapes  met  the  gaze;  at  each  new  turn 
the  traveller  saw  lakes,  waterfalls  flinging  their  spray 
upon  the  road,  ice-cold  springs  bursting  forth  and  slip- 
ping down  the  hillside  through  wildernesses  of  tangled 
bloom.  He  looked  down  dizzy  precipices  upon  the 
tops  of  giant  pines;  he  looked  up  to  arching  forests 
overhead,  and  far  above  them  the  barren  granite  crags, 
snow-crowned,  gleaming  against  the  sky  of  heaven's 
clearest,  most  cloudless  blue.  From  the  summit  of 
the  Pass  they  saw  the  hyacinthine  waters  of  sealike 
Tahoe,  and  farther  east,  beyond  sharp  descents  and 
treeless  hills,  the  level  desert  stretched  out  of  sight, 
seemingly  as  vast  and  as  trackless  as  ocean  itself. 

Such  were  the  general  features,  with  infinite  varia- 
tions in  detail,  so  that  even  old  stage  drivers  were  heard 
to  say  that  they  enjoyed  the  outlook  more  every  time 
they  crossed  the  summit.  Springtime  in  the  valley 
meant  alpine  winter  on  the  heights.  Summer  in  the 


DEPENDENT  INDUSTRIES.  115 

farm  lands  meant  the  flush  of  spring  in  the  passes, 
where  brilliant  blue  and  golden  flowers  and  new  grass 
were  just  looking  forth  at  the  edge  of  the  snowdrifts. 
As  for  the  desert,  it  was  like  the  mountains  and  the 
ocean,  a  thing  of  infinite  moods.  Into  that  corrugated 
basin  the  short,  swift  streams  of  the  eastern  slope  of 
the  Sierras  descend  to  disappear;  the  "  eastward-gazing 
grizzly  bear/'  to  quote  from  one  of  Dr.  Gally's  stories, 
"  lifts  his  flexible  nostrils  to  snuff  the  odours  of  the  arid 
waste,  then  slowly  turns  and  prowls  westward."  Be- 
yond is  the  "  great  empire  of  Artemisia,"  where  gold 
and  silver  "  were  married  in  the  volcanic  chamber  of 
the  awful  past."  You  see  the  nature  of  it  from  the 
mountain  top — this  land  of  Washoe  with  its  browns 
and  grays,  its  arid  junipers  and  dull  nut-pines  on  the 
rocks,  its  dark  mountains  of  limestone,  basalt,  por- 
phyry, granite,  in  naked  barrenness.  "  Underfoot," 
writes  Dr.  Gaily,  "  the  world  is  dark,  gray,  and  silent. 
Overhead,  during  the  long  cloudless  day,  it  is  pale- 
blue,  dry,  silent.  All  abroad,  it  is  gray  or  dark  with 
mountain  distance,  and  it  is  silent."  Silence  is  every- 
where. No  "roar  of  far-off  torrents  tumbling  down 
the  hills  to  jar  the  night  air  underneath  the  stars — 
the  stars  still  are,  but  all  the  torrents  have  departed." 
Time  was,  at  some  lost  period  backward  of  all  dates, 
"  when  the  Great  High  Sheriff  of  the  Universe  in  open 
court  has  cried  '  Silence! '  and  has  been  obeyed." 

All  day  long,  from  dusk  of  dawn  to  twilight,  the 
swift,  hard  struggle  to  get  mails  and  passengers  across 
the  Sierras  continued.  At  times  relays  of  coaches  were 
kept  up  all  night,  with  profit  to  the  companies.  Never 
before  in  the  history  of  transportation  was  the  tireless 
energy  of  men  and  animals  and  the  value  of  thorough 
organization  and  lavish  expenditure  better  exemplified 
than  during  the  best  days  of  the  old  Pioneer  stage  line. 
.9 


116  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

The  schedule  time  by  stage  from  Sacramento  to  Vir- 
ginia City — one  hundred  and  sixty-two  miles — was 
three  days  in  I860,,  and  it  was  often  hard  to  make  con- 
nections; by  1863  the  schedule  time  had  been  reduced 
to  eighteen  hours,  and  passengers  could  go  on  without 
stopping  except  for  meals,  or  they  could  stay  over  one 
night  on  the  road.  Three  wealthy  mining  operators 
who  wished  to  reach  San  Francisco  as  soon  as  possible 
were  once  taken  by  the  Pioneer  stage  line  from  Vir- 
ginia City  to  the  wharf  at  Sacramento  in  twelve  hours 
and  twenty-three  minutes.  The  steamer  was  ready 
to  cast  off,  and  in  less  than  two  minutes  they  were  on 
their  way  down  the  river. 

Accidents  occurred,  as  might  have  been  expected, 
when  several  thousand  men  and  twenty  thousand  horses 
and  mules  were  daily  strung  out  somewhere  along  the 
rocky  highways.  The  freight  lines  opened  to  let  the 
stages  through,  but  droves  of  wild  Mexican  cattle  were 
not  so  accommodating,  and  sometimes  overturned  the 
coaches.  Masses  of  earth  and  stone  slid  into  the  road; 
horses  stumbled  and  fell,  dragging  others  with  them. 
On  one  occasion  a  large  grizzly  bear  ran  across  the  road, 
frightening  a  stage  team;  the  horses  reared,  ran  partly 
around  the  coach,  and  broke  the  pole;  the  passengers 
"  leaped  off  and  out  in  every  direction."  A  stage  on 
Johnson's  Pass  once  toppled  over  a  bank  and  caught 
in  the  top  of  a  tough-limbed  Sierra  pine;  the  passengers 
crawled  out  unhurt  and  reached  the  ground  by  drop- 
ping from  limb  to  limb.  It  was  a  thousand  feet  to  the 
bottom  of  the  cafion  where  they  would  have  landed  if 
the  pine  tree  had  happened  to  grow  somewhere  else. 

The  pioneer  stage  driver  of  the  Nevada-California 
lines  was  as  different  from  the  freighter  as  two  classes 
of  men  could  possibly  be.  One  finds  him  occasionally 
in  these  days  on  the  short  stage  lines  left  in  the  moun- 


DEPENDENT  INDUSTRIES. 

tains,  but  "  Ichabod  "  is  written  upon  the  occupation, 
and  the  whole  attitude  of  the  drivers  toward  life  shows 
it.  Once  they  took  all  the  celebrities  of  the  Pacific 
coast  over  the  Sierras,  and  had  the  delightful  knowl- 
edge that  governors,  generals,  mine  presidents,  and 
millionaires  were  laying  plans  to  cut  out  each  other 
and  to  possess  in  sole  ownership  the  "seat  by  the 
driver,"  the  best  seat  on  the  coach.  Once  they  were 
distinctly  at  the  top  of  mountain  society,  the  unchal- 
lenged lions  of  the  wayside  inns,  privileged -characters, 
story-tellers  at  whose  slightest  word  the  loud  laugh 
went  around.  Now  they  drive  "  mud- wagons  "  for  the 
most  part,  that  two  or  four  horses  can  manage.  Wages 
have  fallen  to  two  dollars  a  day;  horses,  harness,  and 
everything  else  have  deteriorated  in  like  proportion, 
and  the  fragments  of  the  old  highways  are  hardly  as 
good  as  the  emigrants  of  1849  left  them. 

These  Jehus  of  the  ?60's  are  better  than  old  files  of 
newspapers.  They  can  give  you,  if  they  choose,  the 
very  tones  in  which  the  judge  summed  up  his  charge 
to  some  sage-brush  jury,  the  speeches  of  the  lawyers 
when  Ophir  was  fighting  Burning  Moscow,  the  talk 
of  once-famous  operators  rushing  across  the  Sierras 
with  relays  of  horses.  The  glow  and  passion  of  the  days 
they  love  to  remember  lingers  still  in  their  voices;  they 
have  stories  of  hunters  told  first  in  camps  whose  very 
names  are  forgotten,  stories  of  outlaws  in  the  Sierras, 
stories  quaint,  humorous,  pathetic,  gathered  from  thou- 
sands of  brilliant  and  original  characters  who  have 
travelled  with  them. 

But  there  is  still  another  class  of  outside  industries 
created  by  the  Comstock.  Supplies  and  passenger 
travel  were  not  more  important  to  the  mining  camps 
than  wood  for  fuel,  for  building,  and  for  the  timbering 
of  the  shafts,  drifts,  and  other  underground  workings. 


118  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Wood  choppers  and  lumbermen  have  always  been 
prominent  auxiliaries  of  every  mine.  By  the  winter 
of  1866  the  price  of  firewood  rose  to  fifty  dollars  a  cord, 
and  as  retailed  by  the  Chinese  with  burro  trains  to 
sixty  and  seventy  dollars.  The  towns  and  mills  along 
the  great  lode  used  by  this  time  two  hundred  thou- 
sand cords  of  wood  annually.  Since  the  mills  managed 
to  get  their  wood  for  ten  dollars,  and  since  all  provident 
persons  laid  in  their  whole  supply  in  summer,  it  is  not 
likely  that  more  than  $2,500,000  was  actually  spent. 
Still,  that  was  a  very  large  sum  to  pay  out  for  the  fuel 
supply  of  so  few  people. 

Of  equally  vital  importance  was  the  supply  of  clear 
lumber  of  the  best  quality.  This  could  not  be  furnished 
by  the  brittle,  knotty  nut-pine  of  Nevada.  A  few 
forests  were  within  the  reach  of  the  pioneer  sawmills 
of  Washoe  and  the  upper  Carson,  but  the  prices  were 
practically  prohibitory  of  improvements.  Then  came 
an  increasing  demand  from  the  lower  levels  of  the 
mines,  "  Give  us  more  lumber  or  we  can  not  keep  on 
drifting  out  ore  even  with  our  '  square-set '  system 
of  supports."  The  men  of  the  mines  cast  longing 
glances  over  at  the  mighty  forests  of  pine  and  cedar 
on  the  slopes  of  the  Sierras.  The  bull-punchers  and 
the  small  sawmills  around  Carson  could  no  longer  sup- 
ply half  the  demands  of  the  Comstock  lode. 

"  More!  More!  "  the  insatiate  miners  cried,  and  the 
time  came  when  eighty  million  feet  of  lumber  annually 
went  down  into  the  chambers  and  drifts,  and  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  thousand  cords  of  wood  were  burned 
annually  by  the  Comstock  towns  and  mills.  The  lum- 
ber that  was  put  into  the  mines  was  crushed,  forced 
together  into  solid  masses  by  the  weight  of  moving 
mountains  above.  One  single  mine  has  often  buried 
lumber  at  the  rate  of  six  million  feet  a  year. 


DEPENDENT  INDUSTRIES.  119 

It  was  plainly  possible  to  continue  to  cut  wagon 
roads  to  various  points  along  the  eastern  slope  of  the 
Sierras,  even  to  the  top,  and  then  haul  logs  to  the  saw- 
mills in  Washoe  Valley.  This  was  done  for  a  time,  and, 
if  continued,  might  have  developed  as  extensive  a  log- 
ging business  with  ox  teams  as  the  handling  of  supplies 
had  already  developed  in  the  freighting  line.  The 
bull-puncher  might  then  have  become  as  notable  and 
universal  a  figure  as  his  brothers  of  the  Sierra  high- 
ways. But  the  cost  of  road-making  was  enormous, 
owing  to  the  ravages  of  winter  storms,  and  some  better 
method  was  needed. 

In  conveniently  steep  places,  where  deep  water 
could  be  had  by  a  dam,  or  in  a  lake,  short  chutes  of 
tree  trunks  were  made  down  which  large  logs  could  be 
slid  headlong,  flaming  and  smoking  from  the  friction  of 
their  rapid  descent.  There  were  only  a  few  places  where 
this  could  be  done  without  injuring  the  timber.  Un- 
less the  grade  was  very  steep  the  logs  would  not  slide. 
Various  other  plans  were  tried.  Ordinary  square-box 
flumes  were  constructed  instead  of  the  dry  chutes,  and 
were  carried  for  many  miles  up  the  winding  canons. 

The  square-flume  plan  did  not  long  remain  in  use, 
for  in  1866  or  1867  experiments  were  made  by  a  lum- 
berman named  Haines,  in  Kingsbury  Canon,  with  a 
simple  form  of  trough  that  has  since  been  adopted  in 
every  mountainous  region  of  the  Pacific  coast — the 
famous  V-flume.  Haines  took  rough  planks  two  feet 
wide,  an  inch  and  a  half  thick,  and  sixteen  feet  long, 
and  joined  them  at  right  angles,  lapping  successive 
sections  to  make  any  desired  length.  The  flume  rested 
on  the  hillside,  with  props  against  the  lower  side,  and 
was  carried  across  canons  on  trestle  work.  The  next 
improvement  was  to  join  the  sections  evenly  by  a  V- 
joint  underneath.  After  a  few  years  flumes  of  this 


120  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

pattern  were  made  much  larger  and  were  lined  with 
planed  boards. 

This  invention,  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  the 
mining  period,  came  at  a  time  when  the  Californians 
had  spent  large  sums  trying  to  handle  cheaply  ajid 
rapidly  the  immense  bodies  of  timber  on  the  long  west- 
ern slopes  of  the  Sierras  where  several  species  of  conifers 
make  trees  that  are  often  ten  or  twelve  feet  in  diameter 
and  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  high.  They  adopted 
the  Nevada  V-flume  system  with  modifications,  plac- 
ing large  mills  in  the  forests  and  moving  the  sawed 
lumber  in  form  for  market,  millions  of  feet  annually, 
delivering  it  in  the  valley  below.  On  the  eastern  slopes 
of  the  Sierras  the  descent  is  much  more  abrupt  and 
broken,  and  the  trees  are  smaller  than  on  the  western 
slopes.  Here  the  grade  of  the  flumes  was  often  four 
feet  to  a  rod;  logs  and  lumber  were  swept  down  in 
torrents  of  white  foam,  and  sometimes,  when  jammed, 
were  hurled  into  the  air  as  if  by  a  powerful  explosive. 
Many  mountain  slopes  which  could  never  have  been 
reached  by  the  bull-punchers  were  easily  cleared  by 
using  these  short,  steep  flumes. 

One  of  the  largest  V-flumes  ever  built  in  Nevada 
was  fifteen  miles  long  and  contains  two  million  feet 
of  lumber.  It  carried  five  hundred  cords  of  wood,  or 
half  a  million  feet  of  lumber,  either  sawed  or  in  logs, 
in  a  single  day.  In  1880  ten  flumes  were  reported  by 
the  Surveyor  General,  covering  in  all  eighty  miles. 
The  amount  of  firewood  actually  flumed  that  year  was 
171,000  cords,  and  of  lumber  33,300,000  feet.  Ten 
and  fifteen  thousand  dollars  a  mile  has  been  spent  to 
construct  some  of  these  flumes. 

It  would  seem  at  first  thought  that  there  could  be 
but  few  other  dependent  industries  besides  those  al- 
ready noted  in  this  chapter,  but  the  ramifications  of 


DEPENDENT  INDUSTRIES.  121 

the  subject  are  almost  endless.  There  were  the  found- 
ries of  Virginia  City,  the  first  one  established  in  1863, 
and  soon  followed  by  others,  so  that  all  repairs  could 
be  made  for  the  mining  machinery,  and  everything 
except  the  larger  engines  could  be  built.  Soda,  which 
was  used  extensively  in  the  mills,  was  soon  obtained 
from  the  desert.  Copper  ore,  mined  on  Walker  Eiver, 
was  used  to  make  sulphate  of  copper,  or  bluestone, 
of  which  the  mills  used  a  great  deal.  Marshy  beds 
of  borax,  large  deposits  of  alum,  and  black  oxide  of 
manganese  were  discovered  and  to  some  extent  utilized 
as  needed  by  the  Comstock  towns. 

Salt  was  freighted  across  the  Sierras  until  pros- 
pectors developed  many  and  extensive  deposits.  The 
first  efforts  to  bring  salt  from  beyond  the  forty-mile 
desert  was  remarkable  on  account  of  the  animals  used. 
The  owners  of  the  salt  deposit  sent  to  Asia  and  ob- 
tained in  good  condition  nine  Bactrian  camels  in  the 
spring  of  1861,  and  used  them  for  a  year  or  two.  Each 
one  carried  about  five  hundred  pounds,  or  twice  as 
much  as  a  pack  mule  did.  They  ate  nearly  every  kind 
of  desert  vegetation,  particularly  the  harsh  "grease- 
wood."  On  the  other  hand,  they  suffered  greatly  from 
the  alkali,  and  their  drivers  despised  and  neglected 
them  in  every  conceivable  manner,  so  that  the  experi- 
ment never  had  a  fair  trial.  In  the  end  some  of  them 
died,  some  were  used  to  carry  ore  in  Arizona,  and  some 
escaped  and  have  been  reported  at  intervals  by  fright- 
ened cowboys  or  astonished  tourists  iri  the  mountains 
of  northern  Arizona  and  New  Mexico. 

Thus,  as  we  have  seen,  the  seemingly  small  and 
incidental  elements  in  the  life  of  a  mining  camp  really 
occupy  whole  regiments  of  men.  These  dependent 
industries  were  as  much  the  creation  of  the  Com- 
stock as  the  great  hoisting  works,  the  mills,  or  the 


122  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Sutro  Tunnel.  Destroy  public  confidence  in  the  value 
of  the  mines,  and  from  that  moment  snows  would 
drift  unheeded  over  the  mountain  highways  and  ava- 
lanches would  sweep  them  away  to  remain  forever  un- 
restored.  Log-cabin  stations  would  be  abandoned, 
flumes  would  rot  on  the  hillsides,  and  iron  water  pipes 
would  rust.  Orchards  in  the  mountains  would  go  un- 
pruned  and  grapes  lie  ungathered  except  by  birds  and 
raccoons.  When  the  toiling  miner  tunnelled  into  some 
new  deposit  of  rich  ore,  valleys  and  mountains  were 
glad  because  of  his  good  fortune. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

MINING  LITIGATION. 

IT  would  be  easy  to  moralize  about  the  "general 
cussedness  "  of  all  mining,  particularly  silver  mining, 
"which  is  full  of  dips,  spurs,  and  angles,"  and,  like 
gambling,  extremely  uncertain.  This  remark  applies 
with  peculiar  force  to  the  Comstock  camps.  There, 
as  Calvin  would  have  said,  the  hand  of  Satan  was  daily 
manifest.  Never  since  the  world  began  were  conflict- 
ing interests,  honest  and  dishonest,  more  wildly  en- 
tangled than  in  that  early  Nevada. 

The  trouble  began  in  the  carelessness,  or  worse, 
of  the  prospectors  of  1858  and  1859.  I  have  alluded 
in  a  previous  chapter  to  some  of  their  meetings  to  de- 
clare laws  respecting  claims,  and  to  the  Gold  Hill  black- 
smith who  kept  his  record  book  in  a  saloon  where  all 
and  sundry  could  and  did  alter  the  entries.  If  prop- 
erly carried  out,  the  district  regulations  might  have 
done  good  service;  but  they  were  so  sadly  neglected 
that  none  of  the  early  miners  had  what  lawyers 
would  call  a  title.  Lord,  in  his  history,  cites  the 
example  of  the  original  claim  of  O'Kiley,  McLaugh- 
lin,  Penrod,  and  Comstock,  now  held  by  the  Ophir  and 
Consolidated  Virginia  and  California  companies.  The 
four  men  put  a  stake  on  the  line  of  the  croppings  fifty 
feet  south  of  the  place  where  the  strike  was  made,  and 
another  one  fifteen  hundred  feet  north  of  the  first  stake. 
This  gave  one  claim  to  each  of  the  four,  and  one  extra 

123 


124:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

claim  for  the  discovery,  which  was  the  custom  at  the 
time.  They  posted  no  notice  (as  the  rules  required), 
they  recorded  no  notice  either  then  or  afterward  (ex- 
pressly stated  to  be  the  most  important  evidence  of 
ownership).  Then  came  one  James  Cory,  a  chum  of 
Comstock's,  and  asked  for  a  share.  Not  receiving  it, 
he  posted  a  notice  and  claimed  four  hundred  and  fifty 
feet  adjoining  the  claim  of  Comstock  &  Company. 
This  was  half  as  much  again  as  he  had  a  right  to  under 
the  district  laws.  Big  John  Bishop  and  a  miner  named 
Camp  told  him  that  it  was  their  ground,  and  the  three 
finally  divided  but  did  not  record  the  claims.  Several 
other  overlapping  claims  were  made  informally,  and 
shortly  afterward  the  miners  discovered  that  upon 
one  part  of  the  lode,  seven  hundred  and  ten  feet  long, 
they  had  actually  taken  up  and  recorded  fifteen  hun- 
dred and  fifty  feet!  Compromises  and  various  read- 
justments followed,  but  so  obscure  and  conflicting 
were  the  records  and  the  "  memory  of  witnesses  "  that 
titles  in  this  part  of  the  Comstock  have  always  been 
unsettled. 

There  is  a  very  strong  reason  in  the  nature  of  mines 
and  miners  for  many  of  the  delays  in  properly  defin- 
ing a  claim.  Every  part  of  a  ledge  is  not  equally  rich. 
Ore  occurs  in  "  seams/'  "  chimneys,"  or  "  chutes/'  and 
as  soon  as  a  man  "struck  it  rich"  his  first  thought 
was  usually  to  explore  it  until  he  could  select  and  stake 
out  the  best  three  hundred  feet.  Nearly  all  of  the 
early  locators  on  the  Comstock  were  trying  to  get  the 
richest  slice  in  the  lode,  and  they  kept  away  from  the 
recorder's  office;  or  if  they  entered  a  claim,  they  took 
care  to  leave  it  in  such  shape  that  it  could  be  altered, 
like  some  of  the  Spanish  land  grants  of  California 
that  were  "  floated  "  ten  or  fifteen  miles,  much  to  the 
subsequent  profit  of  attorneys. 


MINING  LITIGATION.  125 

Even  when  the  "metes  and  bounds"  were  well 
denned  the  guileless  miners  could  not  always  be  de- 
pended upon  to  leave  them  so.  One  of  the  pioneers 
mentions  a  mining  suit  in  which  the  matter  hinged 
upon  the  location  of  a  stump  that  marked  the  corner. 
Judge  and  jury  adjourned  and  went  to  look  at  the 
stump.  It  had  been  dug  up  bodily  during  the  night 
and  carried  off,  and  the  ground  was  so  levelled  that  not 
the  slightest  clew  remained.  Each  side  accused  the 
other,  and  the  case  was  never  decided. 

All  the  American  mining  camps  have  maintained 
in  the  case  of  quartz  ledges  the  right  to  an  inclined 
location — that  is,  the  right  to  take  a  claim  of  definite 
size  and  follow  it  downward  at  any  angle  or  angles, 
taking  all  the  ore  in  the  vein  and  in  its  legitimate 
branches.  A  miner,  according  to  this  idea,  takes  up 
a  piece  of  ground  simply  for  the  lode,  and  goes  wherever 
it  goes.  Spanish  mining  law,  on  the  contrary,  recog- 
nises only  the  square  location.  According  to  the  Span- 
ish plan,  as  soon  as  a  ledge  passes  beyond  the  boundary 
of  a  square  piece  of  ground  of  given  size  it  belongs 
to  the  man  in  whose  tract  it  lies.  One  can  easily  see 
that  the  Spanish  system  must  prevent  much  trouble 
and  render  the  single-vein  problem  immaterial.  In 
fact,  it  rules  out  of  court  nine  tenths  of  all  the  cases 
that  lead  to  lawsuits.  Matters  rapidly  went  from  bad 
to  worse  on  the  Comstock  until  the  most  casual  ob- 
server would  have  seen  a  wild  Walpurgis-night  revel 
of  conflicting  claims  of  every  size,  shape,  and  age  tum- 
bling over  each  other  three  and  four  deep.  It  is  hardly 
surprising,  for  the  Comstock  was  not  the  only  vein 
on  the  side  of  Mount  Davidson,  nor  even  the  most 
prominent  one.  The  Virginia  lode  was  nearly  parallel, 
and  other  veins,  too  many  to  name  and  hardly  worth 
while  digging  up  from  the  dust  of  forgotten  records, 


126  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

crossed  and  recrossed  the  original  Comstock  until  even 
ideally  honest  and  painstaking  miners,  geologists,  and 
courts  would  have  found  it  impossible  to  straighten 
out  the  tangle  that  began  when  the  first  stake  was 
driven  at  Gold  Hill.  When,  as  of  course  soon  hap- 
pened, the  miners  became  very  much  excited,  when 
courts  and  lawyers  were  subjected  to  enormous  tempta- 
tions, and  when  it  was  found  that  geologists  and  min- 
eralogists could  not  settle  the  question  beforehand, 
the  result  is  easy  to  sum  up.  Everywhere  in  the  period 
of  litigation  there  were  almost  inconceivable  expenses, 
ruining  the  lesser  mines,  preventing  dividends  even 
where  miners  were  working  rich  bodies  of  ore.  Titles 
were  clouded  for  years,  and  the  finest  legal  intellects 
in  America  wrestled  on  the  Comstock  in  cases  that  are 
still  famous. 

Let  us  turn  again  to  the  genial  Eoss  Browne  for  a 
characteristic  picture  of  the  contentious  miners.  He 
says  that  when  he  entered  Virginia  City  by  way  of  fitly- 
named  Devil's  Gate  a  fraction  of  the  crowd  "  were  en- 
gaged in  a  lawsuit  relative  to  a  question  of  title.  The 
arguments  used  on  both  sides  were  empty  whisky  bot- 
tles, after  the  fashion  of  the  Basilinum  or  club  law 
which,  according  to  Addison,  prevailed  in  the  colleges 
of  learned  men  of  former  times.  Several  of  the  dis- 
putants had  been  already  knocked  down  and  convinced, 
and  various  others  were  freely  shedding  their  blood 
in  the  cause."  The  Comstock  ledge,  Mr.  Browne 
thought,  was  very  fine,  but  it  was  held  at  a  thousand 
dollars  a  running  foot  "  when  not  even  the  great  Com- 
stock himself  could  tell  where  it  was  running  to."  The 
whole  region  was  in  the  midst  of  a  free  fight  among 
the  various  claimants.  The  Comstock  was  "  in  a  mess 
of  confusion."  Its  shareholders  had  the  most  enlarged 
views,  but  those  who  had  struck  croppings  around 


MINING  LITIGATION.  127 

the  Comstock  were  just  as  liberal  in  their  ideas,  so 
that,  in  brief,  "  everybody's  spurs  were  running  into 
everybody  else's  angles."  The  Cedar  Hill  Com- 
pany was  spurring  the  Miller  Company,  the  Virginia 
ledge  was  spurring  the  Continuation,  the  Don  Com- 
pany was  spurring  the  Billy  Chollar,  the  Washoe 
was  spurring  everything  else,  and  all  these,  the 
Comstock,  and  a  dozen  others,  were  interlocked 
spurs  with  spurs  and  angles  with  angles,  like  a  Chinese 
puzzle. 

A  study  of  the  map  of  the  United  States  Geological 
Survey,  showing  the  locations  at  even  a  later  date  when 
many  of  the  earlier  claims  had  been  consolidated  out 
of  existence,  will  convince  any  one  that  the  preceding 
description  of  the  Gordian  knots  left  for  the  lawyers 
are  only  the  merest  glimpses  of  a  state  of  things  that 
should  never  have  existed,  and  that  cost  the  young 
mining  communities  of  Nevada  uncounted  millions. 
Still  the  age  of  litigation,  here  as  elsewhere,  only  proved 
the  existence  of  a  rich  camp.  Men  do  not  fight  "  like 
grim  death  "  for  worthless  ground. 

Contests  in  the  courts  began  as  soon  as  the  promi- 
nent mines  had  cut  far  enough  into  the  ore  bodies  to 
be  ready  to  infringe  upon  each  other's  claims.  The 
real  geology  of  the  district  then  became  a  pressing 
problem.  Since  the  miners  were  determined  to  hold 
fast  to  the  "inclined-location"  method,  the  main 
problem  was  as  follows:  Were  the  quartz  bodies  nar- 
row veins  separated  by  barren  rock,  or  was  all  the  vein 
matter  deposited  in  one  great  irregular  fissure,  partly 
filled  with  wedges  and  masses  of  porphyry?  Did  the 
Comstock  really  consist  of  a  single  vein,  or  was  it  a 
multiple  vein?  Such  were  the  questions  that  divided 
the  miners  into  two  hostile  camps.  What  is  now  uni- 
versally recognised  as  a  monster  lode  then  seemed 


128  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

to  consist  of  a  number  of  narrow,  well-defined  ledges, 
two  of  which  were  very  prominent 

But  to  call  the  system  a  single  lode  was  to  entitle 
the  first  locators  to  divide  among  themselves  nearly 
everything  along  the  hill  slope  and  over  the  whole 
Comstock  basin,  and  the  rows  of  later  locations,  east 
and  west,  were  annihilated  at  a  blow.  Even  the  Cali- 
fornians  who  had  bought  out  the  original  claimants 
of  the  Comstock  did  not  dream  of  such  wide-reach- 
ing ownership.  Besides,  the  great  majority  were  out- 
side, and  naturally  held  to  the  popular  many-ledge 
theory.  A  few  strongly  organized  and  wealthy  com- 
panies, holding  what  turned  out  to  be  the  main  ledge, 
ultimately  decided  to  push  the  single-ledge  theory, 
but  at  first  all  the  evidence  was  dead  against  them. 

Since  the  Comstock  near  the  surface  dipped  toward 
the  west,  it  separated  more  and  more  from  the  line  of 
claims  on  the  east,  and  the  first  conflict  was  therefore 
with  the  nearest  line  of  claims  on  the  west.  The  small 
ledges  here  seemed  very  rich  and  were  perpendicular,  or 
nearly  so.  Thus  the  sloping  shafts  of  the  Ophir,  Mexi- 
can, and  other  mines  soon  came  in  contact  with  the  ver- 
tical shafts  on  what  was  termed  the  "  middle  lead."  The 
result  was  the  case  of  Ophir  versus  McCall,  which  came 
up  in  Genoa,  September  3,  1860,  before  Judge  Cradle- 
baugh  in  the  loft  of  a  livery  stable.  Several  hundred 
armed  men  sat  behind  the  respective  parties  to  the  suit. 
One  witness  was  shot  at  a  number  of  times  as  he  rode 
down  the  ravine  at  night.  Although  the  famous  Wil- 
liam M.  Stewart — rugged,  masterful,  full  of  vitality, 
already  recognised  as  the  coming  king  of  the  Com- 
stock— was  attorney  for  the  Ophir,  he  could  only 
force  a  disagreement  of  the  jury. 

Mining  cases  accumulated  steadily  until  Judge  Mott 
opened  the  First  District  Court  in  February,  1862. 


MINING  LITIGATION.  129 

By  that  time  every  valuable  claim  in  the  region  was  a 
"  fighting  claim  " — that  is,  it  was  deeply  and  violently 
in  litigation.  Suits  to  dispossess  claimants,  suits  to 
prove  trespass,  perjury,  or  fraud,  single-ledge  suits  and 
multiple-ledge  suits — these  were  as  thick  as  blackber- 
ries. Wrote  a  correspondent  of  the  San  Francisco 
Bulletin:  "We  shall  never  outgrow  this  perpetual 
litigation  until  the  courts  rule  that  all  indefinite  or 
floating  claims  are  worthless.  If  you  find  anything 
worth  having,  some  one  will  levy  blackmail." 

Fights  between  rival  claimants  were  frequent  and 
bloody.  Sometimes  such  fights  took  place  "at  the 
front" — that  is,  at  the  end  of  a  drift.  If  there  was 
reason  to  believe  that  a  rival  company  was  working 
on  disputed  ground,  the  superintendent  of  the  first 
company  took  steps  to  drive  them  away  either  by  smok- 
ing them  out  with  sulphur  or  other  substances,  or  by 
running  a  drift  into  the  place  and  sending  a  body  of 
miners  with  picks  and  shovels  to  overpower  the  enemy. 
"  Fighting  men  "  were  hired  at  ten  dollars  a  day  in 
some  cases,  armed  with  knives  and  pistols,  and  sent  to 
disputed  territory.  In  fact,  while  cases  were  being 
argued  in  the  courts,  miners  were  sometimes  fighting 
underground.  The  men  of  the  Keystone  Company 
drove  away  the  miners  of  the  Peerless,  took  possession 
of  their  shaft,  and  filled  it  with  waste  rock.  The  Grass 
Valley  miners  were  assaulted  through  a  drift  by  men 
of  the  Bajazette  and  Golden  Era  and  driven  to  the  sur- 
face. The  Uncle  Sam  boys  drove  out  the  Centreville 
men  in  a  similar  manner.  Yellow  Jacket  sappers  cut 
into  the  Gentry  shaft  and  smoked  out  their  rivals.  The 
Gentrys  countermined  and  blew  "  all  sorts  of  stinking 
smudges  "  into  Yellow  Jacket  until  the  people  of  Vir- 
ginia protested  against  the  unendurable  odours  that 
filled  every  house  in  the  city. 


130  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

One  of  the  most  famous  suits  of  the  period  was 
brought  by  the  heirs  and  old-time  backers  of  the  Grosh 
brothers,  who,  it  will  be  remembered,  had  been  pros- 
pecting for  silver  and  had  organized  several  companies 
before  the  Gold  Hill  discovery.  The  shareholders  in 
these  forgotten  enterprises  now  formed  the  "  Grosh 
Gold  and  Silver  Mining  Company  "  and  claimed  3,750 
feet  in  the  best  part  of  the  Comstock.  Capitalized  at 
$5,000,000,  and  afterward  at  $10,000,000,  they  soon 
sold  enough  stock  to  make  a  long  and  brilliant  fight. 
The  Nevada  newspapers,  like  Silas  Wegg,  "  dropped 
into  rhyme  "  such  as  the  following: 

The  Ophir  on  the  Comstock 

Was  rich  as  bread  and  honey ; 
The  Gould  and  Curry,  farther  south, 

Was  raking  out  the  money ; 
The  Savage  and  the  others 

Had  machinery  all  complete, 
When  in  came  the  Groshes 

And  nipped  all  our  feet. 

After  long  and  costly  litigation  the  heirs  of  the 
Grosh  brothers  failed  to  secure  any  foothold,  and  so 
dropped  into  oblivion. 

Another  most  difficult,  protracted,  and  expensive 
mining  suit  was  between  the  famous  Billy  Chollar  and 
the  Potosi'tpronounced  by  old  Comstock  Potosee).  The 
Chollar  Company,  after  a  long  -series  of  minor  difficul- 
ties with  the  adjoining  claim  (Potosi),  claimed  that 
theirs  was  the  original  ledge,  and  brought  suit  to  "  re- 
cover possession  of  a  surface  claim  four  hundred  feet 
wide  and  fourteen  hundred  feet  long,"  including,  of 
course,  a  large  part  of  the  Comstock  lode  with  the  in- 
evitable "dips,  spurs,  and  angles."  The  companies 
fairly  locked  horns  over  this  difficulty  in  1861,  and 


On  the  Way  to  the  Mine. 


MINING  LITIGATION.  131 

spent  about  a  million  and  a  half  before  they  concluded 
to  unite  their  shattered  fortunes  in  the  great  Chollar- 
Potosi.  , 

When  this  suit  was  brought,  Judge  Mott,  who  was 
on  the  bench  of  the  First  Territorial  District,  favoured 
the  Chollar  side  in  their  geological  theory  that  the 
Comstock  was  only  an  offshoot  from  their  vein.  Mott, 
to  quote  from  Bancroft,  "  was  therefore  bribed  or  wor- 
ried into  resigning."  The  new  incumbent,  Judge 
North,  finally  decided  in  favour  of  the  Potosi  crowd. 
North  was  soon  afterward  forced  to  resign  "to  avoid 
the  scandal  of  which  he  was  the  subject."  Chief- 
Justice  Turner  was  persuaded  to  follow  his  example, 
and  finally  the  members  of  the  bar  asked  the  one  re- 
maining judge  to  resign,  which  he  did.  Both  sides  had 
received  conflicting  decisions  in  the  course  of  this  piti- 
able affair,  but  neither  side,  as  it  turned  out,  felt  will- 
ing to  have  their  methods  of  conducting  litigation  made 
public,  and  so,  as  I  have  said,  the  companies  consoli- 
dated. 

The  great  fight,  however,  unique  in  many  respects 
among  mining  suits,  was  that  instituted  at  a  very  early 
date  by  Burning  Moscow  against  Ophir.  The  new 
company,  under  the  title  of  "Burning  Mosca  Ledge 
Lucky  Co.,"  claimed,  in  April,  1860,  2,400  feet  "  west 
of  Virginia  City,  between  the  Central  and  Virginia 
ledges."  Their  ledge  was  said  to  be  distinct  from  that 
of  the  Ophir,  and  to  be  "twenty-three  feet  wide  in 
good  ore."  The  stock  was  "boomed"  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, and  soon  the  company  had  the  sinews  of  war 
and  came  to  the  front  in  support  of  the  favourite  many- 
ledge  theory  as  against  the  belief  that  ledges  a  mile 
away  sprang  from  the  roots  of  the  Comstock  and  would 
eventually  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  "only  original 
Jacobs,"  the  first  line  of  locators. 
10 


132  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Burning  Moscow  made  an  assault  with  terrible 
effect.  All  the  wheels  of  the  courts  were  set  in  motion. 
Ophir  began  buying  out  interests  in  other  claims  on 
the  rival  lode.  The  Garrison  Company  also  brought 
suit  against  Ophir;  the  Whitbeck  Company  did  the 
same,  and  the  McCall  Company  followed,  until  Ophir 
purchased  all  their  claims,  which  were  on  three  so- 
called  ledges  lying  within  fifteen  hundred  feet  of  each 
other.  Old  Virginia  made  his  last  public  appearance 
in  connection  with  these  Ophir  purchases.  Some  of 
the  claims  they  secured  depended  upon  the  original 
notice  of  location.  Finney  would  not  or  could  not  find 
it  until  the  superintendent  of  Ophir  persuaded  him 
into  a  tunnel  and  locked  an  iron  gate  upon  him.  In 
the  morning  he  was  sober  and  willing  to  produce  the 
notice.  He  went  to  the  disputed  ledge,  pried  off  a 
weather-beaten  slab,  and  found  a  yellow  paper,  the 
original  location  notice  that  he  had  put  there  in  1858. 

Burning  Moscow,  whose  location  was  disputed  in 
a  similar  manner  by  claims  on  sub-ledges,  consolidated 
about  this  time  with  its  several  tormentors,  increased 
its  capital  stock  from  half  a  million  to  three  million 
dollars,  and  returned  with  multiplied  energy  to  the 
assault  upon  Ophir.  California  and  Nevada  courts 
were  shaken  by  the  tumult  of  the  struggle.  The  first 
onslaught  of  the  Moscow  supporters  had  lasted  for  two 
years,  and  the  second  lasted  quite  as  long.  The  pioneer 
Comstockers  were  again  and  again  questioned  and 
cross-questioned,  until  the  little  that  they  knew  was 
inextricably  confused  with  the  host  of  mining  romances 
of  the  period.  Some  of  them  fairly  lived  on  witness 
fees.  The  district  record  book  was  made  to  uphold 
each  theory  by  turn.  Meanwhile  the  real  question 
in  dispute  could  not  be  determined  except  by  actual 
exploration. 


MINING  LITIGATION.  133 

Gradually  this  view  of  the  case  began  to  prevail. 
The  community  felt  that  the  development  of  the  dis- 
trict was  fatally  handicapped  by  such  gigantic  litiga- 
tion. Suddenly  Burning  Moscow  discovered  that  what- 
ever might  be  at  the  bottom  of  their  ledge,  the  top  was 
chiefly  lead  and  base  metal.  It  was  no  Comstock,  but 
contained  only  a  very  low-grade  ore  that  could  not  be 
milled  at  a  profit  after  a  few  surface  stringers  were 
mined  out.  Burning-Moscow  stock  fell  from  four  hun- 
dred dollars  to  five  dollars  a  foot,  and  OpMr  bought  the 
disputed  property.  First  and  last,  the  direct  expenses 
of  the  fight  had  been  more  than  a  million  dollars. 

The  mining  suits  which  have  been  briefly  described 
were  only  a  few  out  of  a  great  multitude.  In  1863 
some  thirty  cases,  involving  property  valued  at  fifty 
million  dollars,  were  in  the  district  courts.  "  We  had 
to  fight  fire  with  fire  in  those  days,"  said  an  old  Cali- 
fornian.  Men  who  saw  their  whole  fortunes  at  stake 
were  not  always  scrupulous  about  ways  and  means, 
and  their  active  agents  were  less  often  so.  The  atmos- 
phere in  which  these  interminable  litigations  were  car- 
ried on  became  heavier  and  blacker  every  year.  Pub- 
lic confidence  in  witnesses,  juries,  attorneys,  and  judges 
was  sorely  shaken.  The  Attorney-General  of  Nevada  in 
one  of  his  State  reports,  referring  to  the  period  under 
consideration,  said:  "  Chicanery  won  more  suits  than 
eloquence  and  learning,  and  corruption  more  than  solid 
merit."  Nine  tenths  of  the  voting  population  of  Storey 
County  once  signed  a  petition  asking  all  the  judges  to 
resign. 

Nevada's  peculiar  pre-eminence  in  the  matter  of 
litigation  from  1860  to  the  end  of  1865  is  clearly  ex- 
hibited by  the  Court  records  for  that  period.  Ophir 
was  in  thirty-seven  suits,  in  twenty-eight  of  which 
she  was  plaintiff.  Yellow  Jacket  came  next,  with 


134:  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

thirty-two  suits,  being  plaintiff  in  twenty-four.  Sav- 
age was  nearly  as  litigious,  having  had  twenty-nine 
suits  and  acting  as  plaintiff  in  twenty-two.  Gould 
and  Curry  comes  next,  with  twenty-seven  suits,  twenty 
of  which  were  "  actions  brought."  Overman  had 
twenty-three  suits.  Eight  more  of  the  leading  Corn- 
stock  mines  of  the  period  under  consideration  (not 
including  Consolidated  Virginia,  California,  or  the  later 
combinations)  had  from  nine  to  seventeen  suits  apiece. 
The  total  for  twelve  mines  is  two  hundred  and  forty- 
five  lawsuits,  in  seventy-seven  of  which  the  companies 
named  were  defendants  and  in  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
eight  of  which  they  were  plaintiffs.  In  other  words, 
more  than  two  thirds  of  the  suits  were  to  dispossess 
the  claimants  of  ground  the  plaintiffs  considered  as 
belonging  to  the  Comstock  lode  under  the  single-ledge 
theory.  The  direct  cost  of  all  this  litigation  was  ten 
million  dollars — one  fifth  of  the  entire  product  of  the 
Comstock  during  that  period.  What  an  illustration  of 
the  wasteful  yet  magnificent  energy  of  the  early  Com- 
stockers  is  the  fact  that  this  heart-breaking  litigation 
began  almost  as  soon  as  the  discovery  of  silver  was  made, 
and  rose  to  its  greatest  developments  at  the  same  time 
with  the  gigantic  mechanical  achievements  and  the 
vast  underground  works  of  the  epoch!  Five  of  those 
Nevada  years  were  the  equivalent  of  half  a  century 
of  every-day  life  and  of  ordinary  enterprises. 

Great  were  the  legal  intellects  that  were  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  mining  hosts  fighting  so  steadily  for  con- 
trol of  what  began  to  be  called  on  the  Pacific  coast  the 
"  Treasure-house  of  the  World."  Some  of  the  famous 
cases  were  tried  in  San  Francisco,  where  the  leading 
companies  soon  had  their  places  of  business;  but  Vir- 
ginia City  and  (after  the  admission  of  Nevada  in  1864) 
Carson,  the  State  capital,  were  the  principal  battle 


MINING  LITIGATION.  135 

grounds.  The  leading  Comstock  lawyers  became  fa- 
mous throughout  the  United  States.  Young  attorneys 
trained  on  the  Comstock  followed  the  prospector,  the 
miner,  the  mill  owner,  and  the  freighter  to  camp  after 
camp  in  the  desert  and  the  high  Eockies  till  the  prin- 
ciples of  American  mining  law  were  expounded  in 
Dead-Sea  hollows  below  the  ocean  level,  and  in  clusters 
of  pioneer  cabins  above  the  clouds,  ten  thousand  feet 
higher  than  the  ocean  floor,  in  the  Alps  of  Colorado. 
William  M.  Stewart,  the  "  old  invincible,"  tireless  in 
devotion,  incapable  of  fatigue,  master  of  mining-camp 
juries,  received  from  Belcher  $165,000  and  from  Yellow 
Jacket  $30,000  as  single  fees.  His  professional  income 
during  the  years  of  litigation  was  $200,000  a  year. 
General  Thomas  H.  Williams  made  four  million  dollars 
from  mining  property  deeded  to  him  as  fees  for  his 
legal  services. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATOE8. 

IN  these  days  nine  men  out  of  ten  know  something 
about  mining  stocks  and  methods  of  dealing  in  them. 
At  the  time  of  the  discovery  of  the  Comstock  there 
was  no  such  thing  on  the  Pacific  coast  as  a  stock  and 
exchange  board  where  shares  in  mines  or  companies 
could  be  listed  and  transferred.  But  the  people  of  the 
entire  Pacific  coast  were  highly  prosperous  and  ready 
for  speculative  investment.  There  were  few  manu- 
factures, so  that  real  estate  and  mines  offered  almost 
the  only  opportunities.  The  invention  of  methods  by 
which  the  dollars  of  the  servant  girl  and  the  farm 
labourer  could  be  used  to  speculate  with  suited  all 
classes  alike.  Assessments  furnished  the  impetus  that 
carried  the  Comstock  mines  safely  over  periods  of  de- 
pression. 

Men  were  trading  and  selling  not  shares,  but  feet 
and  inches,  on  the  various  ledges  of  the  Comstock 
group  all  through  the  eventful  summer  of  1859.  The 
first  trouble  was  that  no  one  had  any  cash,  excepting 
a  few  newly  arrived  Californians.  The  second  trouble 
was  that  nothing  was  developed  sufficiently  to  show 
other  than  a  speculative  value,  even  on  the  main  Com- 
stock lode.  Buying  such  property  seemed  to  cautious 
men  the  wildest  of  gambles,  even  at  absurdly  low  prices. 
Prospectors  and  speculators  were  staking  out  the  coun- 
try for  miles  around.  There  were  times  when,  if  quartz 

136 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.  137 

ledges  could  be  supposed  to  take  a  personal  interest 
in  their  fortunes,  the  Comstock  would  have  been  seen 
to  stand  abashed,  flushing  with  indignation  at  the  way 
in  which  its  sworn  lovers  were  flirting  with  base-metal 
outcroppings  in  the  sage  brush  and  deserts. 

One  will  fail  to  appreciate  the  completeness  with 
which  the  Pacific  coast  became  in  a  day  captive  to  sil- 
ver unless  he  accepts  the  great  rush  to  Washoe  as  mere- 
ly the  outward  and  visible  symbol  of  things  spiritual 
and  intellectual.  Men,  women,  and  children  yielded 
gladly  to  the  spell — the  story  of  another  Peru,  and 
the  eager  silver  hunters  were  met  on  the  summits  of 
the  Sierras  by  ragged,  hungry,  but  desperately  happy 
prospectors  who  told  them  that  Washoe  was  richer 
than  their  dreams  had  pictured  it,  and  who  offered 
them  mining  feet  in  claims  here,  there,  and  everywhere 
for  a  few  dollars. 

"  The  truth  is,"  they  whispered  to  the  incoming 
Calif ornians — "  the  truth  is  that  I  am  dead  broke,  but 
I  have  a  fortune  sufficient  for  any  man  in  even  the  poor- 
est of  these  claims  which  I  have  taken  up  or  traded  for. 
Five  feet  is  enough  to  make  a  man  rich,  and  if  you  can 
not  take  more,  take  five  feet,  it  makes  no  difference 
where,  at  ten  dollars  a  foot."  Then  they  showed  speci- 
mens so  rich,  black,  and  heavy  that  the  Californians 
held  their  breath  with  envy,  and,  whether  they  bought 
or  not,  hastened  on  with  redoubled  energies.  There 
was  something  wonderfully  childlike  and  confiding 
about  the  bargains  and  transfers  often  made  after  pre- 
cisely this  manner  in  the  Sierra  passes  between  entire 
strangers. 

In  a  few  months  the  professional  speculator,  "  the 
man  who  worked  claims  with  his  jaw  instead  of  his 
pick"  (to  quote  a  common  Washoe  sentiment),  was 
to  be  seen  everywhere.  Such  men  "huddled  about 


138  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

corners  of  Virginia  City  consulting  in  low  tones  about 
various  claims  "  ;  they  straggled  in  from  the  Flowery 
diggings  or  other  supposedly  rich  places  with  speci- 
mens in  their  hands,  "  offering  bargains/'  as  Eoss 
Browne  writes,  "  in  the  Rogers,  the  Lady  Bryant,  the 
Mammoth,  the  Woolly  Horse,  and  Heaven  knows  how 
many  other  valuable  leads,  at  prices  varying  from  ten 
to  seventy-five  dollars  a  foot/7  The  old,  old  games, 
as  ancient  as  human  capacity  for  swindling  and  being 
swindled,  were  everywhere  in  full  operation,  though 
no  one  as  yet  called  the  process  "  dealing  in  stocks." 
They  were  "  bucking  and  bearing  "  (the  term  "  bull  " 
was  not  then  known  on  the  Comstock).  They  were 
"  trading  claims."  They  were  "  stuffing  each  other  " 
after  every  conceivable  manner  and  diligently  blowing 
"  Washoe  bubbles."  Mad  speculation  was  everywhere, 
but  no  money  was  to  be  seen  except  in  gambling  rooms 
and  saloons.  Silver  was  everywhere  underground,  if 
reports  could  be  credited;  lawsuits,  deeds,  mortgages, 
and  agreements  to  transfer  everything  on  top  of  the 
earth  or  within  it  were  as  thick  as  autumn  leaves  and 
hardly  as  durable.  Everybody  was  a  billionaire  in 
silver-claim  inches,  feet,  yards,  and  rods,  "  including 
dips,  spurs,  and  angles,"  from  the  top  of  Mount  David- 
son to  the  bottom  of — Devil's  Gate. 

Ross  Browne,  whose  genius  caught  many  a  glimpse 
in  the  rapidly  turning  kaleidoscope  of  the  Comstock, 
remains  our  best  guide  through  the  "  horrible  confusion 
of  tongues,"  the  crowds  of  roaring,  raving  drunkards, 
"  swilling  fiery  liquids  from  morning  to  night "  ;  the 
"  flaring  and  flaunting  gambling  saloons  "  ;  the  "  tor- 
rents of  imprecations "  ;  the  feverish,  unhallowed 
thirst  for  gain;  the  crowds  of  crazy-looking  wretches 
running  hither  and  thither,  hurrying  to  assay  offices, 
pulling  out  papers,  exchanging  mysterious  signals — 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATOES.     139 

these  Washoe  millionaires  with  their  outcroppings  and 
indications  from  the  "  Wake-Up  Jake,"  "  Root  Hog  or 
Die,"  "  Wild  Cat,"  "  Dry-Up,"  <  Grizzly-Hill,"  "  Same- 
Horse,"  "  Let-Her-Eip,"  "Yon-Bet,"  "Gouge-Eye," 
and  other  famous  ledges  and  companies.  All  night  long, 
as  Browne  elsewhere  reports,  these  fiendish  noises  con- 
tended, and  his  ears  were  overwhelmed  with  unintelli- 
gible jargonings  and  the  difficult  slang  of  the  new  min- 
ing camp.  He  tried  one  night  to  sleep  at  "  Zip's," 
where  twenty  bunks  were  in  the  room,  and  found  that 
every  inmate  except  himself  was  bent  on  passing  the 
entire  night  trading  and  transferring  claims  in  the 
midst  of  shouting  and  universal  pandemonium.  He 
and  the  late  Henry  De  Groot  fled  for  refuge  to  a  hole 
in  the  hillside  and  wrote  letters  to  the  New  York  Times 
and  the  San  Francisco  Bulletin  describing  in  most  real- 
istic language  the  strange  scenes  about  them. 

What  most  surprised  and  often  shocked  the  visitor 
was  the  fact  that  all  this  turmoil,  this  restless  con- 
course of  amateur  stockbrokers  and  new-fledged  specu- 
lators whose  ranks  increased  daily,  this  howling  and 
perennial  insanity,  occurred  in  a  frontier  camp  in  the 
midst  of  noble  mountains  where  only  a  short  time 
before  the  profound  peace  of  an  untroubled  wilder- 
ness had  reigned  supreme.  One  writer  suggested  that 
if  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange  should  hold  its  meet- 
ings on  the  top  of  Mount  Eigi  the  scene  would  be  paral- 
leled, but  in  many  respects  it  was  a  situation  that  was 
entirely  new  to  the  history  of  speculation  in  America, 
and  the  strangely  mingled  Comstock  crowd  of  1860 
was  certainly  more  wildly  picturesque  on  the  windy 
-  flank  of  Mount  Davidson  than  even  the  most  turbulent 
of  well-dressed  New  York  brokers  and  speculators.  As 
they  swayed  through  alleys  between  flapping  canvas 
tents  they  seemed  the  chattering,  half-dazed,  wild- 


140  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

eyed  survivors  of  all  nations  and  races  thrown  shattered 
and  homeless  into  the  desert  after  some  vast  world 
catastrophe  that  had  erased  from  existence  everything 
except  the  wealth  passion  and  the  ledges  of  Washoe. 

But  prices  of  mining  claims  could  not  rise  forever. 
With  drastic  sarcasm  an  "  old  resident  of  Washoe/' 
who  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  late  J.  W.  Simon- 
ton,  one  of  the  owners  of  the  San  Francisco  Bulletin, 
described  the  situation  in  May,  1860:  "We  are  in- 
formed that  there  is  a  panic  in  San  Francisco  in  rela- 
tion to  our  mining  stocks;  that  nothing  will  sell;  that 
even  Ophir,  Washoe,  Chollar,  and  Corsair  are  drugs 
in  the  market;  that  banks  won't  discount  Washoe  specu- 
lators' paper;  that  Lady  Bryan  sells  for  fifteen  dollars 
and  Rogers  for  forty  dollars;  that  the  bottom  has  fallen 
out.  Two  months  ago,"  he  continues,  "these  wise 
men  of  Gotham  went  to  sea  in  a  bowl  and  got  badly 
wet.  Two  months  ago  everything  would  sell.  People 
bought  blindly  in  the  Bob  Ridley,  Last  Chance,  and 
Bob-Tail  Nag.  Where  they  were  located,  what  was 
the  character  of  the  rock,  who  were  the  locators,  and 
what  the  title,  were  not  matters  of  inquiry.  Fools  at 
your  end  of  the  telegraph  were  deceived  by  knaves  at 
our  end;  we  sent  to  you  mysterious  hints  of  new  discov- 
eries that  never  existed,  strikes  in  mines  never  located, 
accounts  of  sales  that  never  took  place.  Your  prudent 
men  who  would  not  buy  a  foot  of  land  in  San  Fran- 
cisco or  make  a  loan  without  careful  search  of  title  have 
risked  thousands  without  a  thought.  Your  greedy 
folly  was  taken  advantage  of  by  our  avarice;  you  be- 
came the  victims  of  your  own  sublime  stupidity  and 
dishonesty." 

A  conservative  estimate  made  in  1860  placed  the 
number  of  claims  located,  interests  in  which  were  in 
most  cases  on  the  market,  as  five  thousand  within  a 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS. 

radius  of  thirty  miles  from  Virginia  City!  Only  three 
hundred  of  these  claims  were  ever  opened  at  all,  and 
only  twenty  were  considered  by  careful  outsiders  as 
"  thoroughly  well  established  mines."  Time  was  to 
show  that  only  eight  or  nine  of  the  twenty  which  were 
considered  absolutely  certain  investments  were  to  pay 
dividends.  The  majority  of  these  five  thousand  claims 
lay  forever  idle.  One  would  not  have  known  that  they 
were  called  mines  except  for  an  occasional  claim  stake 
or  a  fluttering,  badly  spelled  notice  on  "  indications  " 
which  were  seldom  attractive  to  competent  mineralo- 
gists. Iron  pyrites  and  all  sorts  of  worthless  metals 
were  as  good  as  gold  and  silver  to  the  enterprising  ad- 
venturers. Gopher,  squirrel,  and  coyote  holes  fur- 
nished indications  on  the  strength  of  which  claims 
were  laid  out.  Ignorant  and  plausible  speculators 
with  a  smattering  of  geology  added  to  the  confusion. 
Before  long  men  were  claiming  to  have  ledges  of  irid- 
ium,  platinum,  plumbago,  and  various  other  valu- 
able substances.  One  "Washoe  prospector  being  in- 
formed by  a  San  Francisco  man  that  he  wanted  an 
ambergris  mine,  replied  that  he  had  one  already  staked 
out  and  for  sale.  A  group  of  men  under  direction  of 
the  "  spirits  "  tunnelled  for  weeks  into  the  granite  of 
Mount  Davidson  in  order  to  tap  an  alleged  lake  of 
coal  oil. 

Besides  the  five  thousand  actual  claims  there  were 
many  more  prospect  holes  a  few  feet  across — mere 
ragged  pits  or  cuts  in  the  yellow  sand,  clay,  or  rocks 
of  the  barren  hillsides.  Prospect  holes,  too,  were  about 
all  that  one  could  see  on  the  vast  majority  of  claims 
already  held.  They  dotted  the  whole  region  in  wind- 
blown heaps  and  hollows  between  dismal  clumps  of 
sage  brush  and  the  dull  yellow  of  coarse  sunflowers 
that  occasionally  bloomed  in  the  freshly  broken  slopes. 


142  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

This  was  the  sort  of  thing,  for  the  most  part,  that  the 
staid  old  merchants  of  San  Francisco  and  Sacramento 
had  been  fighting  over  in  the  spring  of  1860!  Vir- 
ginia City  and  Gold  Hill  record  books  show  that  nearly 
sixteen  thousand  claims  were  recorded  in  those  dis- 
tricts in  the  twenty  years  after  1859. 

Donald  Davidson,  the  first  ore  buyer  on  the  Corn- 
stock,  was  soon  introduced  to  one  of  the  favourite  jokes 
of  the  fun-loving  miners  who  were  quite  well  aware 
of  the  innate  absurdity  of  claim-staking  the  whole  of 
Nevada.  After  he  had  agreed  to  buy  two  hundred 
tons  of  selected  Ophir  ore  at  two  hundred  dollars  a  ton 
and  to  ship  it  at  his  own  expense  per  Carson  mule  fast- 
freight  train,  the  miners  celebrated  the  important 
event  by  a  trip  to  the  top  of  "  Sun  Peak,"  which  then 
and  there  was  rebaptized  Mount  Davidson.  They 
showed  the  honest  old  Scotchman  dozens  of  quartz 
veins  on  the  way  up,  and  told  him  they  were  fairly  run- 
ning over  with  richness.  After  their  return  in  the 
evening  they  proposed  to  locate  claims  on  these  new 
ledges  for  the  banker  and  all  his  personal  friends.  The 
recorder  was  called  in,  and  Davidson  gladly  put  up 
fifty  cents  apiece  for  some  twenty-five  claims  in  the 
granite  masses  of  the  grand  old  mountain.  Then  the 
jovial  recorder  suddenly  invited  the  crowd  to  aid  him 
in  the  liquid  transmutation  of  some  of  the  Davidsonian 
gold. 

Throughout  the  entire  period  of  stock  speculation, 
in  all  its  ebbs  and  flows  here  and  elsewhere  as  well, 
every  student  is  surprised  at  the  fewness  of  the  paying 
mines  and  at  the  number  that  hang  helplessly  upon 
reputations  made  for  the  various  districts  by  one  or  two 
magnificent  properties  in  each.  The  bullion  reports 
from  these  stir  the  pulses  of  investors  and  speculators 
alike,  and  they  often  pour  successive  assessments  into 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.     143 

worthless  and  barren  places  for  years.  The  sum  total  of 
the  dead- work  of  the  Comstock  period  is  almost  incalcu- 
lable. Men  of  large  capital  and  the  millions  with  their 
small  savings  united  to  explore  the  ledges  of  Nevada 
at  an  enormous  expense,  and  often  upon  entirely  un- 
profitable mines,  or  rather  not — mines.  To  individual- 
ize these  cases  of  profligate  outlay,  writes  one  of  the 
old  Virginia  City  editors,  "  would  be  simply  to  cata- 
logue the  leading  enterprises  carried  on  during  this 
epoch  of  prodigality  and  mistake."  Ten  million  dol- 
lars was  spent  in  sinking  shafts  and  running  drifts 
about  Virginia  City  without  finding  a  single  large  and 
lucrative  mine. 

There  are  the  forgotten  Palmyra  and  Indian  Spring 
districts  in  Pine  Nut  Eange  where  two  pretty  little 
towns  once  stood,  but  now  only  the  graveyards  remain. 
There  is  that  Nevadan  Golgotha  of  speculators,  Es- 
meralda,  where  millions  of  dollars  were  wasted.  Be- 
yond, toward  the  Humboldt,  in  range  after  range  of 
bleak,  desolate  mountains,  or  in  the  tawny  desert,  are 
the  ruins  of  abortive  mining  enterprises.  In  every 
direction — east,  west,  north,  south — credulous  stock- 
holders staked  and  lost  vast  sums  of  money  before  the 
close  of  the  '60's.  Over  in  the  lava  of  Pine  Woods  dis- 
trict in  1863  some  Virginia  City  men  sold  a  group  of 
mythical  mines  and  received  a  very  large  payment 
down.  The  New  York  buyers  spent  another  fortune 
and  departed,  leaving  the  holes  in  the  desert.  Every- 
where, for  hundred  of  miles,  on  steep  ranges,  in  sandy 
wastes,  money  was  spent  without  stint  upon  misguided 
and  foolish  mining  enterprises,  supported  almost  al- 
ways by  associations  and  companies.  Said  Dr.  De 
Groot,  who  had  visited  nearly  every  camp  on  the  Pacific 
coast,  "That's  the  dilapidated  mill  of  the  Let-Her-Kip" 
— and,  true  to  its  name,  it  burst  the  financial  integu- 


144  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

ments  of  every  stockholder.  "  I  haven't  time,"  he  con- 
tinues, "  to  relate  the  story  of  the  '  Wild  Emigrant,' 
the  '  Shamrock/  the  '  Silver  Lyre,'  the  '  Pungle- 
Down,'  "  and  he  makes  passing  mention  of  many  other 
wildcats  and  abandoned  districts  of  the  '60's,  such  as 
the  "  Lunar  Rainbow,"  the  "  Bloody  Thunder,"  and  the 
countless  host  of  unproductive  mines  in  Cortez,  Silver 
Bend,  Reveille,  Pahranagat,  and  classic  White  Pine. 

Later  came  others,  dragging  luckless  speculators 
down  the  paths  of  ruin — barren  Panamint,  on  the  edge 
of  the  terrible  Death  Valley;  Marietta,  in  the  Excelsior 
Mountains,  where  the  whole  deserted  town  still  lies 
bleaching  in  the  sun;  emptied,  ghostly  camps  by  the 
score,  dead,  unburied,  weighted  down  by  human  curses. 
Each  one  of  them  was  hailed  in  its  day  as  a  new  and 
greater  Comstock;  each  one  in  its  fall  destroyed  homes 
and  made  suicides.  The  smallest  and  most  ephemeral 
of  them  all  has  had  a  history  which,  had  it  occurred  in 
some  staid  farming  community,  would  have  made  the 
place  memorable  as  the  scene  of  an  awful  disaster.  But, 
spread  widely  over  time  and  space,  the  ruin  that  fol- 
lows the  failure  of  a  promising  camp  is  difficult  to  trace 
or  measure,  especially  in  these  lesser  instances.  The 
Amazonian  current  of  Comstock  speculation  sweeps  far 
out  into  the  ocean  of  human  life,  strewn  with  its  multi- 
tudinous social  wrecks,  and  it  still  remains  the  pre- 
eminent type  of  its  class. 

As  time  passed,  mining  stocks  became  more  and 
more  the  typical  and  most  popular  form  of  speculation 
in  California  and  Nevada;  often  the  whole  community 
seemed  to  be  dealing  in  them.  There  have  been  periods 
when  leading  brands  of  goods  have  been  named  after 
favourite  mines,  when  streets,  squares,  parks,  and  chil- 
dren were  christened  in  the  same  way,  and  when  the 
slang  of  the  mining  market  was  used  by  every  class  of 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.     145 

society  and  in  every  learned  profession.  The  bar- 
keeper mixed  "  bonanza "  drinks  and  talked  of  his 
stocks.  Boys  and  girls,  servants,  labourers,  mechanics, 
and  clerks  were  calculating  upon  gaining  fortunes  with 
their  little  savings.  All  classes  alike  helped  to  sustain 
the  stupendous  game  of  silver  mining  in  Nevada. 
"  The  market,"  said  the  Mining  Eeview  in  1870,  "  ex- 
tends everywhere;  the  buyers  and  sellers  of  stock  in- 
clude the  millionaire  and  the  mendicant,  the  modest 
matron  and  the  brazen  courtesan,  the  prudent  man  of 
business  and  the  gambler,  the  maidservant  and  her 
mistress,  the  banker  and  his  customer." 

The  whole  history  of  the  Comstock  lode  is  revealed 
in  the  assessments,  dividends,  and  fluctuations  of  the 
stocks  of  the  separate  mines.  There  every  consolida- 
tion of  interests,  every  lawsuit,  every  period  of  ex- 
travagance and  of  economy  is  written  so  that  he  who 
runs  may  read.  Before  the  end  of  1861  eighty-six  com- 
panies were  organized  and  working  the  Comstock  and 
adjacent  mines;  their  aggregate  capital  was  $61,500,- 
000.  Only  a  few  were  paying  at  the  time,  but  every 
one  fondly  believed  that  they  would  all  wheel  into  line 
before  long.  The  prodigality  that  followed  in  the  days 
of  the  earlier  bonanzas  was  partly  the  free-handed  lib- 
erality of  Californians  trained  in  the  schools  of  the 
placer  camps,  and  partly  the  unchecked  extravagance 
of  gambling  stockholders.  Gould  and  Curry,  a  mar- 
vellously rich  mine,  took  out  nearly  nine  million  dol- 
lars and  declared  $2,908,800  in  dividends  during  1863 
and  1864.  The  actual  investments  made  by  its  owners, 
who  bought  it  for  a  few  thousand  dollars,  had  been 
less  than  $200,000;  but  the  expenses  of  the  company 
during  that  two  years  was  close  upon  six  million  dol- 
lars, or  more  than  twice  the  dividends.  It  has  been 
reckoned  that  the  dividends  from  the  nearly  110,000 


146  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

tons  of  ore  milled  during  those  two  years  might  just 
as  well  have  been  four  and  a  half  millions,,  as  less  than 
three  millions,  if  the  company  had  worked  all  its  ores 
in  its  own  mills  and  with  less  haste.  But,  as  the  presi- 
dent of  Gould  and  Curry  said,  "  every  stockholder 
wanted  it  snaked  out  at  once,  at  any  cost,  and  so  we 
wasted  a  third  of  our  profits." 

The  first  great  depression  in  mining  stocks  (after 
they  had  any  commercial  value  at  all)  began  as  soon 
as  the  rich  ore  chutes  near  the  surface  had  been  worked 
out  and  the  search  for  new  deposits  had  begun,  with 
consequent  assessments.  Shares  rained  on  the  market 
from  all  directions,  and  hundreds  of  prominent  men 
were  ruined.  Gould  and  Curry,  which  in  1863  sold 
at  $6,300  a  square  foot,  fell  to  $900  in  1864.  Ophir 
dropped  from  $1,580  to  $300.  Savage  went  down 
from  $2,600  to  $750.  Every  mine  on  the  Comstock 
suffered  in  a  similar  proportion,  and  the  " wildcats" 
of  the  outside  districts  were  "out  of  sight,  under- 
ground." 

While  the  leading  mines  were  drifting  for  more 
silver  along  the  east  wall,  some  directors,  who  desired 
to  keep  the  news  of  any  "  find  "  from  reaching  the  ears 
of  the  public,  conceived  the  idea  of  confining  miners 
to  the  mine  for  days  at  a  time.  They  received  the  best 
of  care  and  often  had  increased  wages.  In  1868  Hale 
&  Norcross  tried  the  experiment.  When  the  men  were 
released  the  superintendent  reported  a  strike,  and  the 
stock  rose  from  $1,300  to  $2,200,  though  the  mine  did 
not  justify  the  increase.  Speculators  soon  became  so 
suspicious  of  the  plan  that  the  stocks  of  a  mine  were 
quite  as  apt  to  fall  as  to  rise  when  the  miners  were  im- 
prisoned. 

According  to  the  present  plan,  when  a  mine  reaches 
rich  pay-ore  the  superintendent,  who  has  long  watched 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.  147 

the  process  of  the  work,  generally  knows  it  first.  The 
doors  of  the  building  over  the  mine  are  closed  and 
admittance  is  refused  to  all  outsiders,  even  to  reporters. 
Only  a  few  of  the  men  in  the  mine  have  had  a  chance 
to  find  out  anything,  because,  if  the  superintendent 
knows  his  business,  a  "  secret  shift "  has  done  all  the 
work  for  weeks  at  the  advanced  point  in  the  drifts 
where  ore  is  expected.  The  oldest  and  most  reliable 
miners  are  chosen  for  the  shift.  They  are  seldom 
ordered  in  set  terms  to  hold  their  tongues,  but  if  any- 
thing regarding  the  mine  gets  abroad  every  man  on 
the  shift  is  discharged.  The  truth  about  the  inside 
of  a  mine  can  seldom  be  obtained  from  a  miner  that 
works  there.  Loyalty  is  ingrained  in  the  very  nature  of 
the  man.  Though  nearly  every  miner  buys  stock,  and 
it  would  be  strange  if  he  did  not,  he  is  up  to  all  the 
points  of  the  game,  and  if  he  is  on  a  "  secret  shift "  can 
manage  to  conceal  his  information  from  the  shrewdest 
of  "  curbstones  brokers  "  or  mining  spies. 

Virginia  City  in  times  of  stock  excitement  was 
honeycombed  with  newspaper  reporters,  agents  of  deal- 
ers, and  outsiders  whose  business  it  was  to  obtain  by 
fair  means  or  foul  an  exact  knowledge  of  the  condition, 
present  and  prospective,  of  the  Comstock  mines.  Every 
one  who  was  connected  with  the  suspected  mine  or 
mines  was  shadowed  as  closely  as  if  he  was  a  counter- 
feiter. A  Comstock  tradition  is  to  the  effect  that  on 
one  occasion  when  the  air  was  full  of  hints  of  a  strike, 
but  nothing  could  be  gleaned  in  any  direction,  a  shrewd 
mining  detective  hid  in  the  works,  saw  the  superin- 
tendent come  out  and  take  off  his  dirty  mining  clothes. 
He  slipped  in,  and  finally  managed  to  scrape  a  few 
ounces  of  dust  and  clay  from  boots  and  overalls.  This 
waste,  when  assayed,  showed  that  some  drift  the  super- 
intendent had  been  examining  was  in  a  new  and  very 
11 


148  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

rich  formation.  He  wired  his  backers  to  "  buy  hard/' 
and  they  made  vast  profits. 

During  every  great  stock  excitement  the  mining 
towns  themselves  are  loud-buzzing  beehives,  sending 
out  the  latest  news,  buying  and  selling  stocks  with 
feverish  haste.  In  Virginia  City  as  well  as  in  San 
Francisco  at  such  seasons  fortunes  have  been  made  and 
lost  in  an  hour.  It  is  curious  to  see  how  people  behave 
when  stocks  start  upward  again.  Those  who  lost  in 
the  previous  spurts  remark  calmly  to  their  friends: 
"  Now  this  time  I  shall  sell  at  a  fair  profit;  let  the  other 
fellow  make  somthing  too."  Pretty  soon  stocks  jump 
a  little  higher.  "  Now  when  I  can  double  my  money, 
off  I  go  for  a  vacation."  Then  stocks  fall  off  a  few 
points,  "get  soft,"  then  harden,  then  "run  again 
softer."  "  Some  one  has  been  telegraphing  lies  about 
the  mine  to  San  Francisco,"  says  our  friend.  But  mat- 
ters grow  worse,  the  holders  are  called  upon  to  make 
good  their  bargains,  and  the  boom  ends  in  a  crash,  with 
our  luckless  friend  still  holding  his  shares. 

In  Dan  De  Quille's  Big  Bonanza  is  a  letter  said  to 
have  been  received  in  Virginia  City  from  a  Frenchman 
who  had  become  acquainted  with  the  meaning  of  the 
term  "mud,"  and  I  quote  a  portion:  "By  zee  advice 
of  our  goot  friend,"  as  the  inquirer  stated,  "I  have 
procured  some  time  past  on  what  you  call  *  on  zee  time  ' 
many  shares  of  zee  Bobtaile.  He,  mine  friend  who 
repose  on  zee  inside,  express  himself  of  zee  mine  wis 
moche  enthusiasme.  Zee  mine  be  one  merveille  de  la 
nature;  zee  works  un  chef-d'oeuvre  de  Tart.  But  now, 
pretty  soon — le  diable!  Zee  brokaire  man  use  zee  ex- 
pression to  me  as  follows:  '  more  mud.'  So  many,  five, 
seex  time  have  he,  zee  brokaire,  desire  of  me  some  leetle 
more  mud  that  now  I  mus  make  one  gran  sacrifice 
pecuniare.  It  be  now  become  scandaleuse.  Pretty 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.     149 

soon  you  have  one  crash  financial — I  gone  bust — me. 
I  be  ver  moche  perplex  wis  zee  stroke  of  prices.  He 
viggle  up,  he  viggle  down,  all  zee  time.  Will  you  have 
ze  complaisance  to  inform  me  how  soon  he  will  viggle 
high  up,  an  remain  to  pass  some  time  up  dare?  " 

In  order  to  illustrate  more  forcibly  the  fluctuations 
of  the  stock  market  during  the  ten  years  following 
1867,  I  have  gathered  the  following  notes  upon  two 
typical  mines  from  the  commercial  columns  of  the  San 
Francisco  newspapers: 

Alpha,  an  assessment  mine,  sold  for  $1,570  in 
February,  1868,  fell  to  $33  in  September,  rose  to  $62 
in  February,  1869,  sank  to  $11  in  October,  rose  to  $21 
in  March,  1870,  sank  to  $3  in  September,  rose  to  $20 
in  September,  1871,  and  to  $240  in  April,  1872,  then 
sank  to  $15  in  July,  1873,  and  rose  again  to  $100  in 
September;  in  February,  1874,  sank  to  $9,  rose  to  $45 
in  June,  1875,  and  sank  to  $3  the  same  month;  in 
May,  1876,  it  rose  to  $67,  and  sank  in  December  to 
$18;  in  1877  it  fluctuated  between  $5  and  $23.  Alpha, 
with  30,000  shares,  levied  $330,000  in  assessments  up 
to  1880,  and  has  never  declared  a  dividend. 

Belcher,  unlike  Alpha,  was  a  great  dividend  pro- 
ducer, one  of  the  three  leading  mines  of  the  period, 
having  paid  in  thirty-eight  dividends  up  to  1880  nearly 
sixteen  million  dollars,  with  assessments  of  less  than 
two  millions.  It  had  104,000  shares  after  1869  (1,100 
to  the  foot).  The  price  of  the  stock  sank  from  $430 
in  April,  1868,  to  $110  in  July.  Then,  the  capital 
stock  being  largely  increased,  the  price  per  share  be- 
came proportionately  less.  In  1869  prices  ranged  from 
$12  to  $35;  in  1870  sank  from  $35  to  $1;  rose  to  $6 
in  January,  1871,  and  to  $450  in  December;  sank  to 
$6  in  January,  1872,  rose  again  to  $1,525  in  April, 
fluctuating  all  that  summer,  down  to  $1.50,  up  to 


150  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

down  to  $9,  and  so  on.  In  1873  there  were  again  great 
variations;  the  stock  sold  down  to  25  cents  a  share  and 
up  to  $113  with  many  surprising  eddies,  going  down  to 
$1.50  in  August,  and  then  rallying  until  in  January, 
1874,  it  was  at  $120,  breaking  by  November  to  $42. 

It  would  be  easy  to  go  on  with  these  comparisons 
from  which  an  instructive  chart  might  be  constructed  to 
exhibit  the  rise  and  fall  of  stock  values.  For  the  pur- 
poses of  speculation,  the  mines  that  did  not  pay  any 
dividends  were  often  exactly  as  good  as  those  that  did 
pay.  This  was  fortunate  for  the  stock  owners  and  for 
the  miners,  mill  men,  superintendents,  and  all  who 
made  a  living  from  the  business,  either  directly  or  in- 
directly. Out  of  one  hundred  and  three  Washoe  min- 
ing companies  reported  and  regularly  listed,  only  four- 
teen paid  any  dividends  at  all,  and  only  six  of  these 
paid  more  dividends  than  assessments.  The  six  were 
Consolidated  Virginia,  California,  Belcher,  Crown 
Point,  Gould  and  Curry,  and  Kentuck. 

Some  of  the  assessments  paid  upon  mines  that 
never  yielded  a  profit  and  paid  unflinchingly  for  years 
by  successive  legions  of  stockholders  were  unparalleled 
in  mining  history.  Alta  put  in  $1,317,600;  Baltimore 
Consolidated,  $1,015,000;  Bullion,  $3,352,000;  Cale- 
donia, $1,935,000;  Consolidated  Imperial,  $1,125,000; 
Justice,  $3,230,000;  Mexican,  $1,243,000;  New  York, 
$900,000;  Overman,  $3,162,800;  Silver  Hill,  $1,620,- 
000;  Utah,  $1,030,000.  Here  were  ten  mines  that 
sank  in  assessment  work  nearly  seventeen  million  dol- 
lars, while  many  other  mines  that  paid  some  dividends 
lost  very  large  sums:  in  the  case  of  Yellow  Jacket, 
$2,454,000;  and  of  Sierra  Nevada,  $3,747,500.  Hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  investors  in  every  part  of  the  civi- 
lized world  have  reason  to  remember  one  or  another 
of  this  list  of  non-producers. 


Sectional  Vi 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.   151 

It  has  been  estimated  by  many  writers  that  if  the 
highest  price  be  taken  which  each  mine  at  one  time 
or  another  has  brought  (as  figured  out  from  the  number 
of  shares  and  the  stock-board  maximum)  the  Comstock 
has  cost  $700,000,000,  but  there  never  was  a  single 
time  when  the  entire  lode,  even  in  the  stock  market, 
was  being  sold  at  this  valuation.  The  only  possible 
way  of  estimating  the  profits  of  a  mining  enterprise 
is  to  take  the  difference  between  the  total  yield  and  the 
total  expense.  The  currents,  undertows,  eddies,  whirl- 
pools, and  enormous  maelstroms  of  the  mining-stock 
markets  are  of  oceanic  vastness,  crowded  with  unfore- 
seen perils,  and  throbbing  with  immeasurable  energies, 
expressed  all  too  feebly  in  billion-dollar  estimates, 
but  the  actual  available  capital  of  the  stock  market 
is  many  times  less  than  its  fictitious  valuation.  If 
it  were  not  so  there  could  never  be  any  stock  market 
at  all. 

In  the  year  1877  the  total  sales  of  mining  shares 
on  the  three  San  Francisco  stock  boards  amounted  to 
very  nearly  $120,000,000.  This  was  two  years  later 
than  the  height  of  the  greatest  speculative  period  in  the 
history  of  the  lode,  and  may  serve  to  illustrate  what 
used  to  be  called  a  prosperous  year.  Without  some 
such  method  of  speculation  no  mine  that  did  not  pay 
its  expenses  from  the  start  could  ever  have  been  de- 
veloped except  by  wealthy  owners;  no  ten  or  a  hundred 
men  would  have  taken  the  risks  and  invested  the  capi- 
tal required  to  push  work  on  Comstock  mines  as  rapidly 
as  it  was  pushed  for  fifteen  or  eighteen  years  after  their 
location.  The  division  of  the  various  mining  interests 
into  hundreds  of  thousands  of  small  shares  gave  every 
one  an  opportunity  to  invest  in  the  game  of  chance. 
As  long  as  many  thousands  chose  to  invest,  the  high- 
pressure  system  continued. 


152  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Keports  from  the  San  Francisco  boards  were  bul- 
letined in  Virginia  City  as  soon  as  received  in  times 
when  stocks  were  rushing  upward  like  auroras  or  fall- 
ing like  rocket  sticks.  Everybody  ran  to  see  them — 
flour-dusted  bakers,  blacksmiths  with  sledge  hammers, 
white-aproned  butchers,  bare-headed  clerks,  miners  on 
the  way  to  the  shafts,  a  teamster  "  thrusting  his  black- 
snake  under  the  housing  of  his  saddle  mule" — all 
hurrying  to  the  bulletin  boards  to  see  their  fates.  The 
streets  became  blocked  so  that  the  police  had  to  clear 
a  passage,  and  the  town  quivered  with  joy  or  sorrow 
with  each  change  in  the  figures.  Sometimes  a  long- 
drawn  sigh,  mysterious,  universal,  sought  expression  as 
values  slipped  away  down  to  the  depths. 

As  for  the  successful  mining  operator,  time  was 
when  he  was  the  most  aggressive  and  scintillant  figure 
in  the  social  and  business  worlds  of  the  Pacific  coast. 
Such  men  as  "  Jim  »  Keene,  "  Bill "  Lent,  "  Johnny  » 
Skae,  General  Gashwiler,  and  others  still  remembered 
on  Pine  Street,  were  men  who  in  their  time  knew  every 
curve  and  twist  of  the  Comstock  market.  Hundreds 
of  others  linked  their  names  with  famous  mines  and 
with  thrilling  chapters  of  speculation.  Group  after 
group  rose  to  power,  ruled  after  their  kind,  and  fell 
from  authority.  Some  few  there  are  who  have  survived 
many  a  successive  dynasty  and  are  still  Eajahs  of  the 
White  Elephant.  In  flush  times  the  leaders  of  stock 
operations  were  known  by  their  purple  and  fine  linen, 
their  splendid  equipages  and  their  lavish  expenditures, 
generally  in  San  Francisco,  but  sometimes  in  a  trail 
of  corruscating  glory  across  the  continent.  But  every 
now  and  then  a  man  was  caught  on  the  wrong  side  of 
the  market,  which  fluctuated  at  times  much  more  vio- 
lently than  anything  on  Wall  Street.  Down  he  went, 
down  and  under,  and  new  men  took  his  place.  Per- 


STOCK  AND  THE  STOCK  SPECULATORS.     153 

haps  in  the  course  of  time,  soured  and  blunted  by  mis- 
fortune, the  unfortunate  operator  joined  the  ranks  of 
the  please-lend-me-a-dollar  denizens  of  Pauper  Alley,  a 
narrow  street  in  San  Francisco  between  Pine  and  Cali- 
fornia, where  the  hopeless  wrecks  of  forgotten  storms  of 
speculation  are  drifting  to  and  fro. 

There,  in  Pauper  Alley,  one  can  walk,  any  time  in 
business  hours,  and  see  creatures  that  once  were  million- 
aires and  leading  operators.  Now  they  live  by  free 
lunches  in  the  beer  cellars  and  on  stray  dimes  tossed  to 
them  "for  luck."  Women,  too,  form  a  part  of  the 
wretched  crowd  that  haunt  the  ends  of  the  Alley  where 
it  joins  its  more  prosperous  neighbour  streets  and  beg 
every  speculator  to  give  them  a  "  pointer  "  or  to  carry 
a  share  of  stock  for  them.  These  are  the  "  dead  mud- 
hens,"  as  the  men  are  the  "  dead  ducks,"  of  the  Corn- 
stock  share  gamblers.  Horrible  things  one  sees  and 
hears  of  here.  Old  friends  you  thought  were  pros- 
perous but  had  not  heard  of  for  years  shove  themselves 
out  of  the  huddle  and  beg  for  the  price  of  a  glass  of 
whisky.  There  stands  a  once-prosperous  printer,  in 
rags — he  took  flyers  on  the  street  too  many  times. 
Yonder  beggar  lost  $400,000  in  a  single  summer,  all 
good  gold.  The  ghost  of  many  a  murdered  happiness 
walks  unseen  among  these  half-insane  paupers  as  they 
chatter  like  apes  of  lost  fortunes  and  of  the  prospects 
of  their  favourite  stocks.  Really  it  is  a  frightful  thing 
to  walk  there  and  look  at  the  seamy  side  of  the  silken 
garment  of  fortune. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA. 

A  STUDENT  of  mining  interests  must  rise  to  a 
broader  view  than  that  suggested  by  the  artificial 
stimulus  of  the  stock  market.  It  is  something,  of 
course,  to  know  what  has  been  wasted  in  assessments, 
how  stocks  have  fluctuated,  and  what  fortunes  have 
been  gained  or  lost  therein.  But  it  is  in  every  respect 
more  important  to  observe  the  development  of  the 
mines  from  the  standpoint  of  legitimate  business  enter- 
prises, entirely  independent,  in  the  last  analysis,  of 
outside  gambling  elements.  Individuals  have  been 
impoverished,  but  has  the  Pacific  coast  and  the  world 
at  large  gained  or  lost  in  a  financial  sense  by  the  mil- 
lions spent  upon  the  Comstock? 

The  answer  is  given  in  official  records.  If  we  take 
the  summer  of  1859  as  the  starting  point  and  sum  up 
the  assessments  made  by  the  several  Comstock  com- 
panies for  twenty-one  years,  we  shall  arrive  at  the  grand 
total  of  $62,000,000,  according  to  Government  reports. 
Dividends  paid  during  the  same  period  aggregated 
$116,000,000,  and  to  this  the  statisticians  add  $2,- 
000,000  for  unreported  individual  profits  on  mines 
before  they  were  incorporated.  Striking  a  cash  bal- 
ance, the  Comstock  ledger  thus  exhibits  an  actual  profit 
of  $56,000,000.  In  round  numbers,  the  bullion  yield 
of  the  group  of  mines  for  the  same  period  was  valued 
at  $306,000,000.  Subtracting  the  profits,  we  have  as 

154 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.  155 

the  cost  of  the  purchasing,  maintaining,  defending, 
and  developing  the  great  lode  for  twenty-one  years, 
$250,000,000.  Three  fourths  of  this  sum,  it  must  not 
be  forgotten,  came  from  the  mines  themselves;  the 
other  fourth  was  the  result  of  direct  assessments  upon 
the  stockholders. 

Turning  to  consider  the  other  elements  of  cost, 
we  find  that  the  prospectors  and  original  locators  upon 
the  lode  received  less  than  one  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars for  their  claims;  also  that  subsequent  owners  paid 
less  than  a  million  dollars  out  of  their  own  pockets 
as  "  working  capital "  before  the  levying  of  assess- 
ments began.  Practically,  therefore,  and  viewed  as  a 
whole,  the  Comstock  lode  in  twenty-one  years  created 
from  its  yield,  and  at  the  cost  of  only  about  sixty-three 
million  dollars  (adding  the  assessments  as  previously 
noted),  all  the  values  of  towns,  mills,  mines,  machinery, 
and  other  co-ordinate  actualities  too  numerous  to  cata- 
logue. 

The  one  distinguishing  feature  of  all  mining  is  the 
fact  that  the  finest  engineering  skill,  the  special  train- 
ing of  geologists  and  mineralogists,  the  hereditary  in- 
stincts of  the  descendants  of  generations  of  miners, 
are,  and  always  will  be,  incapable  of  mapping  out  min- 
ing territory  except  by  tedious  and  expensive  explora- 
tions. There  are  in  all  mines  periods  of  high  produc- 
tion separated  by  periods  of  low  production.  There 
must  be  "  bonanza  "  and  "  borrasca" 

Both  these  words  are  borrowed  from  the  Mexican 
miners.  They  have  musical  and  expressive  phrases 
for  cuts,  adits,  hanging  wall,  foot  wall,  tunnels,  shafts, 
and  every  part  of  a  mine,  as  well  as  for  every  operation 
connected  with  mining.  Two  Mexican  mining  terms 
are  now  generally  known  to  Americans.  When  a  mine 
is  not  in  pay  ore,  or  the  vein  has  "pinched  out"  or 


156  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

disappeared,  it  is  " en  borra"  or  " emborrescada"  or 
"  borrasca."  As  one  hears  it  on  the  Pacific  coast,  it 
implies  ill  luck  or  hard  times,  coupled  with  stern  reso- 
lution to  keep  pegging  away. 

I  once  heard  a  rancher  greet  a  friend  with,  "  How 
are  things  with  you,  Jim?  " 

"  Still  in  borrasca,  but  it  can't  last  forever,"  was  the 
reply. 

"  How  did  it  happen,  Jim?  " 

"Well,  I  struck  pay  rock  buying  cattle  in  Modoc 
an'  tradin'  that-a-way.  Then  things  sorter  dribbled 
out  till  I  dropped  down  to  sheep  herding  up  on  the 
Chowchilla,  an'  you  know  that's  borrasca." 

"  So  it  is,  sure!  Well,  here's  wishin',  as  the  Greasers 
say,  that  you  may  hev  as  many  days  in  bonanza  as  you 
hed  in  borrasca." 

The  antithesis  is  plain.  Bonanza — a  large  body  of 
pay  ore — has  come  to  mean  especial  prosperity.  The 
allusion  is  to  a  cheerful  proverb  of  the  Mexican  silver 
miners,  which  runs:  "As  many  days  as  you  spend  in 
borrasca  you  will  surely  spend  in  bonanza."  Mexicans 
have  often  been  willing  to  take  leases  of  non-paying 
mines  based  upon  the  condition  that  if  they  find  a 
bonanza  they  shall  be  allowed  to  work  it  for  as  many 
days  as  they  had  laboured  to  find  it.  Such  a  lease  was 
once  given  on  the  Comstock,  and  the  Mexicans  spent 
six  months  tunnelling  through  barren  rock  before  they 
gave  up  in  despair,  much  to  the  joy  of  the  superintend- 
ent, who  had  begun  to  think  they  had  really  found  a 
bonanza  and  were  only  trying  to  lengthen  their  time 
sufficiently  to  be  able  to  "  clean  up  everything  in  sight." 

It  is  one  of  the  striking  features  of  the  story  of  the 
Comstock  that  some  companies  have  usually  been  in 
bonanza  while  others  were  in  borrasca.  Something 
on  the  great  lode  has  been  paying  dividends  even  at 


BORKASCA  AND  BONANZA.        157 

times  of  greatest  depression.  The  working  theory 
of  mines  is  to  be  exploring  for  new  ore  bodies  while 
working  out  the  ore  in  sight,  so  as  to  occupy  both  work- 
men and  mill.  But  in  practice  this  is  often  impossible, 
so  much  "  dead  work  "  has  to  be  done  to  find  and  work 
the  ore  bodies  and  so  much  barren  space  is  passed  over. 
As  long  as  active  exploration  is  being  kept  up  in  a  mine 
there  is  always  a  chance  of  a  strike.  Many  stock  specu- 
lators depend  upon  the  simple  rule  of  buying  whatever 
has  been  a  long  time  out  of  luck.  This  rule  has  made 
and  lost  fortunes  on  the  Comstock. 

There  is  something  sudden,  unexpected,  and  tem- 
porary involved  in  the  term  "  bonanza."  No  one  expects 
or  plans  for  a  bonanza  of  any  sort;  it  means  much  more 
than  merely  pay  rock.  So  it  usually  happens  that  when 
a  company  strikes  a  bonanza  the  stock  has  been  "  kick- 
ing about  the  street,"  to  use  the  broker's  phrase,  which 
means  that  it  was  like  so  much  waste  paper.  The 
chief  owners  of  the  mine  and  their  friends  try  to  gather 
in  all  the  stock  they  can;  pretty  soon  there  is  a  whisper 
of  a  new  bonanza  on  the  Comstock,  and  up  the  prices 
go,  far  above  their  true  value,  then  they  tumble  back 
again.  The  hope  of  a  bonanza,  or  the  rumour  of  its 
actual  presence,  has  been  at  the  bottom  of  every  stock 
excitement.  Safe,  steady  pay  ore  produces  no  such 
flurry  on  the  street. 

What  is  known  on  the  Comstock  as  the  "  old  suc- 
cession of  bonanzas"  began  comparatively  near  the 
surface.  Ophir,  'Mexican,  Savage,  Gould  and  Curry, 
and  Hale  and  Norcross,  all  found  much  ore  along  the 
first  line  of  work.  After  the  vein  was  discovered  to 
dip  toward  the  east  the  second  line  of  shafts  was  con- 
structed with  larger  and  better  works,  and  when  the 
vein  was  again  reached  a  large  number  of  very  rich 
deposits  was  found.  The  gross  yield  of  the  various 


158  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

mines  during  this  entire  period  was  as  follows:  Ophir, 
$20,000,000;  Savage,  $16,500,000;  Hale  and  Norcross, 
$11,000,000;  Chollar  and  Potosi,  $16,000,000;  Gould 
and  Curry,  $15,000,000;  Yellow  Jacket,  $16,500,000; 
Crown  Point,  $22,000,000;  Belcher,  $26,000,000;  Over- 
man, $3,250,000;  Imperial,  $2,750,000;  and  Justice, 
Kentucky,  Sierra  Nevada,  and  many  others,  from  a 
hundred  thousand  to  more  than  a  million  dollars.  By 
1865  the  total  bullion  yield  of  Storey  County,  most  of 
it  from  the  Comstock,  was  about  nine  and  a  half  million 
dollars.  During  the  first  twelve  years  after  1859  the 
production  of  all  the  mines  on  the  Comstock  averaged 
a  little  over  $12,000,000  annually,  or  a  total  of  $145,- 
000,000.  The  actual  yearly  yield,  however,  fluctuated 
greatly;  it  rose  to  seventeen  or  eighteen  millions  and 
sank  as  low  as  two  millions.  Work  went  on  with  un- 
diminished  zeal  in  every  mine  on  the  lode  during  all 
these  twelve  years,  and  those  mines  that  were  in  bor- 
rasca  kept  going  by  means  of  their  monthly  assess- 
ments. 

According  to  modern  methods  of  managing  rich 
mines,  this  enormous  yield  ought  to  have  made  some 
stir  abroad,  but  it  hardly  seemed  to  cause  much  excite- 
ment. Conditions  which  prevailed  on  the  Comstock 
were  such  that  the  larger  part  of  every  bonanza  went 
into  running  and  extraordinary  expenses.  I  have  de- 
scribed a  few  of  the  costly  mechanical  developments 
required,  but  all  along  the  line  magnificent  enterprise 
and  the  most  reckless  waste  went  hand  in  hand,  par- 
ticularly in  the  four  or  five  years  after  1860.  Money 
was  spent  lavishly;  wages  were  very  high,  cost  of  liv- 
ing was  enormous,  and  the  miners  had  the  best  of  every- 
thing. Behind  all  this,  tens  of  millions  of  dollars  went 
for  experiments  with  mills  and  machinery.  As  for 
salaried  officials,  the  number  of  relatives  and  friends 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.        159 

that  the  owners  of  the  famous  mines  managed  to  sup- 
port by  obtaining  them  sinecures  will  never  be  known. 
Clerks  by  the  score  were  paid  with  Comstock  silver 
until,  as  the  writer  of  the  time  casually  remarks,  "  it 
seemed  as  if  half  the  young  men  in  San  Francisco  were 
directly  or  indirectly  supported  by  the  Nevada  mines." 

How  great  was  the  total  of  this  astonishing  waste- 
fulness may  be  gathered  from  a  few  statistics.  The 
grand  old  Ophir,  after  taking  out  $15,000,000,  had 
paid  only  $1,400,000  in  dividends.  Half  a  million, 
to  be  sure,  was  in  the  new  Washoe  Valley  mill,  and  per- 
haps a  million  in  machinery  on  the  mine  itself,  but 
the  rest  went  for  salaries,  labour,  and  "  supplies."  The 
last  elastic  word  had  to  answer  for  many  missing  divi- 
dends in  every  mine  of  the  epoch. 

As  far  as  Virginia  City  was  concerned,  an  assess- 
ment mine  was  often  nearly  as  good  as  a  dividend  mine. 
Every  one  in  its  employ  received  just  as  high  wages, 
paid  with  as  much  promptness,  as  the  wages  at  the 
other  mines.  Lumbermen,  freighters,  merchants,  had 
almost  as  much  support  from  a  mine  that  was  in  bor- 
rasca  as  from  one  in  bonanza,  provided  that  the  bor- 
rasca  did  not  prove  so  continuous  as  to  cause  the  stock- 
holders to  quit  work.  It  was  generally  thought  as 
cheap  to  keep  on  doing  something  as  to  let  the  mine 
go  to  ruin  and  the  machinery  become  worthless. 
Whether  the  advance  drifts  were  in  barren  feldspar, 
in  pay  ore,  or  in  bonanza,  the  great  mines  went  on  sum- 
mer and  winter  alike. 

I  have  already  illustrated  the  expensive  processes 
by  which  the  rich  ore  of  the  first  line  of  bonanzas  was 
wasted,  in  a  previous  chapter,  by  reference  to  the  use- 
less Gould  and  Curry  mill.  In  those  days  the  stock- 
holders of  the  mines  walked  the  streets  of  Virginia 
City  "  as  if  pacing  the  roof  of  an  unfathomable  treas- 


160  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Tire-house,"  says  Mr.  Eliot  Lord,  "  and  their  heads  were 
continually  in  the  clouds.  They  saw  a  network  of  silver 
beneath  their  feet  and  the  fine  strands  widening  into 
solid  wedges  of  ore."  No  metaphor  can  exaggerate 
the  prevailing  delirium.  "Men  were  drunken  with 
the  wine  of  sudden  success,  and  scattered  their  money 
broadcast."  A  superintendent  of  Overman  filled  his 
water  tank  with  champagne  for  his  guests  at  a  wedding. 
Another  Nevada  mining  man  put  door  handles  of  solid 
silver  throughout  his  entire  house.  The  works,  offices, 
residences,  and  stables  of  officials  were  constructed 
on  a  scale  of  expenditure  that  would  have  befitted  an 
Oriental  prince.  Terraces,  fountains,  thoroughbred 
horses,  libraries  in  morocco  "  bought  by  the  foot "  like 
silver  ledges,  the  costliest  of  whatever  can  be  worn, 
drank,  or  eaten — these  were  counted  among  the  neces- 
saries of  existence. 

When  the  free-handed  Californians  led  in  such 
lavishness,  the  few  old-timers  who  were  left  soon  caught 
the  pace.  One  of  these  was  Sandy  Bowers,  once  a 
Gold  Hill  placer  miner,  whose  claim  was  ten  feet  on 
the  Comstock.  A  washerwoman  who  was  in  the  camp 
owned  ten  feet  adjoining.  Bowers  married  her,  and  in 
a  year  or  two,  their  ground  proving  to  be  in  the  heart 
of  the  surface  bonanzas,  they  became  extremely  rich. 
Bowers  began  in  1861  a  stone  mansion  which  finally 
cost  him  $407,000.  While  the  contractors  were  at 
work  upon  the  house  the  wedded  pair  went  to  Europe, 
spending  three  years  there  with  great  comfort  to  them- 
selves. Before  they  left,  Bowers  hired  the  International 
Hotel  and  gave  a  banquet  to  nearly  the  whole  of  Vir- 
ginia City.  Every  luxury  that  San  Francisco  could 
furnish  was  ordered  for  the  occasion.  Bowers's  speech 
was  long  quoted  on  the  Comstock:  "  I've  had  powerful 
good  luck  in  this  country,  an'  now  I've  got  money 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.  161 

to  throw  at  the  birds.  Ther  arn't  no  chance  for  a  gen- 
tleman to  spend  his  coin  in  this  country,  an'  so  me  an' 
Mrs.  Bowers  is  goin'  ter  Yoorup  to  take  in  the  sights." 
He  proceeded  to  explain  that  there  were  few  or  no  people 
worth  seeing  in  America.  He  considered  Horace 
Greeley  worth  looking  at,  "  likewise  Governor  Nye  and 
old  Winnemucca."  But  what  he  had  really  set  his  heart 
upon  was  to  see  "the  Queen  of  England  and  all  the 
other  great  folks  of  them  countries."  Sandy  Bowers 
continued  to  throw  his  money  at  the  birds — chiefly 
birds  of  prey,  as  may  easily' be  conjectured.  He  died 
in  1868,  the  mine  ceased  to  pay,  and  Mrs.  Bowers,  re- 
duced to  poverty,  became  widely  known  as  the  "  Seeress 
of  Washoe,"  the  most  popular  fortune-teller  on  the 
Comstock. 

During  the  first  few  years  of  the  Comstock  the  domi- 
nating individual  was  undoubtedly  the  well-known 
William  A.  Stewart,  afterward  United  States  Senator. 
He  was  a  man  of  large  plans,  immense  fertility  of  re- 
source, and  unblenching  courage.  Burly,  frank- 
spoken,  powerful  mentally  and  physically,  he  was  said 
by  the  Gold  Hill  News  to  "  tower  above  his  fellow-citi- 
zens like  the  Colossus  of  Ehodes  "  and  to  "  contain  as 
much  brass  in  his  composition  as  that  famous  statue 
ever  had."  If  the  flush  times  had  continued,  one  can 
hardly  see  how  the  authority  of  "  Bill  Stewart  of  Ne- 
vada "  could  have  been  shaken.  But  the  times  when  the 
control  of  a  great  mining  district  passes  from  one  man 
or  set  of  men  to  others  are  undoubtedly  the  times  when 
bonanzas  fail  and  stockholders  begin  to  despair.  Then 
occurs  a  general  readjustment,  and  new  men  force 
themselves  to  the  front  as  captains  of  industry. 

Ophir,  which  had  spent  a  million  dollars  or  more 
in  litigation  over  a  piece  of  mining  ground  that  it  after- 
ward bought  for  seventy  thousand  dollars;  Gould  and 


162  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Curry,  whose  bonanza  was  plainly  at  an  end  by  1864; 
Savage,  and  others  of  less  importance — these  began  to 
retrench  in  every  possible  way.  The  trained  business 
man  began  to  be  in  demand;  the  virtues  of  adversity 
began  to  be  developed.  The  wild  and  passionate  min- 
ing-camp leaders,  whose  impulses  were  as  strong  and 
fierce  as  the  waves  of  the  ocean,  were  slowly  giving 
way  before  a  new  epoch — that  of  the  close  organiza- 
tion of  capitalists  for  motives  of  self-interest.  Gone 
were  the  Comstocks  and  O'Rileys,  gone  was  old  Finney, 
the  Rip  Van  Winkle  of  Washoe.  Going,  too,  were 
the  early  Calif  ornians,  the  supplanters  of  the  first  Com- 
stockers,  the  early  mill-builders,  the  first  lumberers 
in  the  Washoe  foothills,  the  men  of  the  first  line  of 
bonanzas.  They  had  spent  too  royally;  the  mines  were 
in  borrasca,  money  was  scarce,  and  every  one  was  in 
debt. 

A  small,  quiet,  reserved  man,  a  born  financier — 
William  Sharon — became  in  the  spring  of  1864  the 
manager  of  the  branch  of  the  Bank  of  California  at  Vir- 
ginia City.  It  is  said  that  he  had  devoted  much  of  the 
preceding  year  to  study  of  the  Comstock;  he  had  lost 
a  moderate  fortune  in  stocks,  and  was  anxious  to  re- 
cover himself.  For  several  months  before  his  appoint- 
ment he  had  been  a  private  financial  agent  of  Ralston's, 
and  had  saved  large  sums  to  the  bank.  Though  almost 
unknown,  a  few  men  saw  in  him  the  coming  master 
of  Nevada. 

Local  banking  houses  were  lending  money  to  busi- 
ness men  and  mill  owners  for  from  three  to  five  per 
cent  a  month;  Sharon  offered  loans  on  the  same  se- 
curity at  two  per  cent,  and  made  large  advances  on 
these  terms.  While  the  mines  were  turning  out  ore 
the  mills  could  easily  pay  such  interest  and  make 
money,  but  as  soon  as  the  ore  product  was  checked  and 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.       163 

the  music  of  the  stamps  ceased,  the  mill  owners  were 
in  trouble.  A  mill  in  White  Pine  district  that  had 
cost  $200,000  was  once  vainly  offered,  when  in  per- 
fect condition,  for  $5,000.  Sharon  himself  once  sold 
a  mill  for  $3,000  that  had  cost  him  $60,000,  the  original 
loan,  and  interest.  Here  in  the  shadow  of  dull  times 
along  the  lode  were  the  beginnings  of  what  the  public 
soon  called  "  an  infamous,  fortified  monopoly  system." 
The  bankers  became  the  mill  owners,  and  ultimately 
managed  to  control  the  mines  also.  Sharon's  oppor- 
tunity came  through  the  few  years  of  leanness  in  the 
producing  mines. 

Mill  after  mill  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Bank  of 
California  until  seven  large  and  well-equipped  quartz 
mills  with  all  their  water  rights,  contracts,  and  privi- 
leges belonged  to  that  institution.  Sharon  had  investi- 
gated every  mine  on  the  lode,  and  believed  that  there 
was  a  future  for  the  Comstock  far  brighter  than  the 
past.  Ralston,  though  always  a  daring  operator  rather 
than  a  banker,  felt  doubtful  of  the  future  of  the  mines. 
If  they  should  fail,  the  abandonment  of  the  district  was 
sure  to  follow,  and  not  only  the  large  sums  he  had  ad- 
vanced upon  milling  property,  but  the  equally  large 
amounts  loaned  to  mining  companies  (not  to  individ- 
uals) would  be  entirely  lost.  The  security  was  practi- 
cally ore  (as  yet  undiscovered);  none  of  the  mine  owners 
were  personally  responsible  under  the  laws  of  that 
period  for  company  debts.  Mills,  machinery,  all  the 
towns  of  Nevada  even,  were  not  worth  tuppence  if  the 
fissure,  so  barren  at  the  levels  being  worked  in  1865, 
continued  barren  much  below  that  depth.  An  absolute 
collapse  of  the  mines  and  all  interests  dependent  upon 
them  was  looked  upon  as  a  not  unlikely  event.  Large 
owners  began  to  try  to  sell,  with  the  usual  result  of 
breaking  the  stock  market  completely. 
12 


164  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

At  this  time  Ealston  visited  the  Comstock.  It  pre- 
sented a  melancholy  picture  of  a  mining  camp  in  eclipse, 
and  he  became  very  uneasy  at  the  situation.  How  much 
the  Bank  of  California  then  had  invested  is  not  known, 
but  it  was  said  by  Mr.  Sharon,  years  later,  that  at  one 
time  before  1870  three  million  dollars  of  the  five  million 
dollars  capital  of  the  bank  was  loaned  on  the  Comstock. 
The  leading  bank  of  the  Pacific  coast  had  virtually 
become  a  mine-supply  company  for  a  group  of  silver 
mines  in  Washoe!  It  already  controlled  some  of  the 
mines  at  the  time  the  mills  began  to  fall  into  its  pos- 
session, and,  upon  Sharon's  advice,  the  policy  of  con- 
quest was  pursued  with  redoubled  energy.  The  bank 
in  the  hands  of  Ralston  and  his  friends  was  liberal, 
enterprising,  speculative,  and  at  times  enormously 
profitable,  but  it  was  managed  in  a  spirit  that  was  far 
removed  from  safe  commercial  methods.  One  may 
even  say  that  the  whole  reckless  audacity  of  the  mining 
era  of  the  Pacific  coast  found  its  apotheosis  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  Bank  of  California,  and  its  typical  men  in 
Ralston  and  his  group. 

Sharon  advised  that  a  corporation  should  be  organ- 
ized by  some  of  the  leading  men  of  the  Bank  of  Cali- 
fornia to  buy  and  manage  the  mills  which  had  come 
into  its  possession,  and  that  these  men  (who  were  al- 
ready holders  of  much  mining  stock)  should  concen- 
trate their  energies  upon  such  mines  as  were  producing 
or  likely  to  produce  ore  for  milling.  The  possibilities 
of  profit  to  this  company  in  case  of  new  ore  bodies  being 
found  were  very  great,  for  they  would  be  making  con- 
tracts with  themselves  whenever  they  sent  the  ore  to 
a  custom  mill.  In  June,  1867,  therefore,  the  famous 
Mill  and  Mining  Company  was  formed  by  W.  C.  Ral- 
ston, William  Sharon,  Alvinza  Hayward,  D.  0.  Mills, 
and  others.  They  were  soon  called  the  "  fortified  mo- 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.        165 

nopolists,"  and  nearly  all  the  vested  interests  of  the 
State  of  Nevada  other  than  their  own  were  soon  arrayed 
against  them. 

There  are  but  two  systems  of  handling  ores:  each 
mine  can  own  its  own  mill,  or  it  can  send  its  ores  to 
a  custom  mill.  In  the  one  case  the  mine  owners  build 
and  carry  on  the  mills,  managing  them  through  salaried 
employees;  in  the  other  they  contract  with  the  lowest 
bidders  who  can  and  will  guarantee  fair  returns.  Both 
systems  have  drawbacks.  On  the  Comstock  the  experi- 
ment made  by  some  mines  of  building  their  own  mills 
had  been  a  sad  one;  the  free,  energetic  mill  owner 
became  a  more  efficient  ore-worker  than  the  hired  mill 
superintendent.  But  the  Comstockers  did  not  protect 
the  permanent  interests  of  the  mill  men  to  whom  they 
owed  so  much.  What  Prof.  Kaymond  has  called  the 
piratical  policy  of  gutting  the  mines  was  carried  on  at 
such  a  shocking  rate  of  speed  that  it  first  unduly  stimu- 
lated the  building  of  mills  and  afterward  left  the  mines 
totally  unable  to  sustain  any  of  them. 

Kalston's  Mill  and  Mining  Company  in  two  years 
was  the  owner  of  seventeen  mills,  some  obtained  by 
foreclosure  of  mortgages,  others  by  purchase.  While 
outside  mills  could  not  make  a  living,  those  of  the 
syndicate  were  kept  running  night  and  day,  crushing 
nearly  all  the  ore  of  the  region.  Naturally,  the  syn- 
dicate fought  everything  that  threatened  to  reduce  its 
profits  or  check  the  progress  of  its  plans  to  become 
absolute  master  of  the  Comstock  and  its  allied  interests. 
It  fought  Sutro,  because  his  tunnel  might  permit  out- 
side mills  on  the  Carson  Eiver  to  work  ore  even 
cheaper;  it  fought  the  independent  mines  and  mills; 
it  entered  politics  and  fought  against  certain  laws  and 
for  other  laws  after  the  manner  of  similar  syndicates 
the  world  over.  It  began  to  hedge  about  the  free  Com- 


166  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

stock  miner,  and  slowly  but  surely  all  men  became  aware 
that  the  substitution  of  the  Sharon  group  for  the  Stew- 
art group  as  the  leading  personal  influence  in  Nevada 
was  a  complete  revolution — the  greatest  that  the  sage- 
brush land  had  yet  seen. 

During  this  period  of  depression,  when  the  Corn- 
stock  lode  fell  measurably  into  the  hands  of  this  small 
group  of  Bank  of  California  men,  almost  the  first 
scheme  of  Sharon  and  his  associates  was  the  building 
of  a  railroad  to  connect  the  mines  with  more  distant 
mills  owned  by  the  syndicate,  and  both  with  the  main 
Central  Pacific  line.  It  was  an  old  idea,  like  every- 
thing else,  long  rolling  about — a  mere  tumble-weed 
of  the  desert.  Legislatures,  both  Territorial  and  State, 
had  granted  charter  after  charter  to  different  parties 
who  agreed  to  build  railroads  after  a  manner  which 
looked  excellently  well  on  paper.  But  these  premature 
and  miscellaneous  projects  of  universal  railroad  build- 
ing in  that  wild  mountain  land  were  without  definite 
purpose,  and  soon  sank  into  a  state  of  innocuous  desue- 
tude. 

Then  Sharon,  the  man  of  affairs,  sent  for  the  best 
mining  surveyor  on  the  Comstock.  This  was  Superin- 
tendent James,  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  Company.  The 
conversation  that  follows  is  from  his  own  statement. 
Sharply,  and  without  a  word  of  explanation,  Sharon 
said: 

"  James,  can  you  run  a  railroad  from  Virginia  City 
to  the  Carson  Kiver?" 

"  Yes." 

"  Do  it  at  once." 

The  next  day  a  party  of  surveyors  were  in  the  field 
along  the  mountain  trails  and  highways.  In  a  month 
the  twenty-one  miles  of  the  route  were  mapped  out, 
grading  had  been  already  commenced,  and  the  rails 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.  167 

had  been  ordered  in  England.  Sharon  himself  had  not 
been  idle.  He  had  formed  his  company,  had  bought 
out  the  necessary  rights  of  those  who  had  several  mori- 
bund charters,  and  had  obtained  from  the  Legislature 
a  new  charter.  More  than  this,  he  had  secured  legis- 
lative authority  for  the  issuance  of  $500,000  in  bonds 
by  the  counties  of  Storey  and  Ormsby  as  a  free  gift 
to  the  railroad.  It  is  needless  to  add  that  the  counties 
duly  issued  the  bonds,  and  without  making  any  condi- 
tions whatever.  The  mining  companies  on  the  lode 
subscribed  $700,000.  Rather  a  busy  thirty  days  this, 
and  well  worth  noting  as  an  instance  of  Comstock 
energy. 

Before  April  750  men  were  at  work,  and  by  May 
1,200,  distributed  in  thirty-eight  camps,  strung  along 
the  line  from  Carson  to  Virginia  City.  Other  gangs 
were  hewing  ties  in  the  Sierras.  On  September  28th, 
the  English  rails  having  arrived,  the  first  one  was  laid, 
and  on  November  12th  the  first  engine  reached  Gold 
Hill.  The  road  cost  $1,750,000,  and  as  much  more 
was  spent  the  next  year  in  extending  it  to  a  junction 
with  the  Central  Pacific  at  Reno. 

What  the  engineers  had  done  in  the  construction 
of  this  little  railroad  was  to  lay  out  a  line  with  a  grade 
of  about  1,600  feet  in  thirteen  and  a  half  miles.  The 
maximum  grade  is  11.6  feet  to  the  mile,  and  the  curves 
of  the  road  in  thirteen  and  a  half  miles  of  mountain 
distance  make  seventeen  full  circles  of  the  track.  It 
justly  ranks  as  one  of  the  noteworthy  achievements 
of  American  mining  camps. 

Trouble  followed  fast  enough:  the  fine  old  silver 
freighter,  in  Nevada  slang  the  mule-skinner,  the  bull- 
puncher,  swinging  his  oxen  around  the  logging  camps 
west  of  Washoe  Valley,  even  that  aristocrat  of  the 
fraternity,  the  lordly  "  silk-popper/'  flicking  his  play- 


168  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

f ul  whip  at  the  leaders  as  he  skilfully  steered  his  loaded 
stages  along  the  precipices  down  Gold  Canon  to  Silver 
City  and  Dayton — these,  all  these,  after  loud  complaint 
and  unavailing  struggles,  went  their  ways  into  the  un- 
railroaded  distance  in  search  of  new  camps.  "  Sharon's 
iron  mules,"  as  they  said,  were  too  much  for  them. 
Some  teamsters  redoubled  their  efforts,  determined  to 
"  beat  Sharon  or  bust."  One  "  train  "  hauled  to  John- 
town  in  1870  weighed,  according  to  the  Gold  Hill  News, 
90,690  pounds,  including  the  wagons;  the  ore  alone 
weighed  over  thirty-six  tons.  But  the  locomotive  beat 
them,  for  the  engineers  sought  to  surpass  each  other 
and  made  some  astonishing  records  for  the  freight  en- 
gines then  in  use.  Finally  a  fourteen-horse  team  fell 
over  the  grade,  breaking  up  the  wagons  and  disabling 
the  horses,  and  the  freighters  reluctantly  retired  from 
the  unequal  contest. 

Cost  of  transportation  was  decidedly  reduced  by  the 
railroad.  Ore  went  to  Carson  for  two  dollars  a  ton 
where  before  it  had  cost  three  dollars  and  a  half,  and 
this  made  it  possible  for  the  mines  to  work  lower  grades 
of  ore,  long  thought  too  poor  to  pay  expenses.  Cord 
wood  fell  from  fifteen  dollars  a  cord  to  eleven  dollars 
and  a  half.  As  many  as  forty-five  freight  trains  went 
daily  over  the  road.  The  mines,  the  mills,  the  freight- 
age, were  now  in  the  hands  of  the  syndicate,  and  it  began 
to  reach  out  to  control  both  the  timber  supply  and  the 
water  supply  of  the  Comstock. 

Meanwhile  the  real  condition  of  the  mines  had  been 
a  constant  source  of  profound  anxiety  to  Sharon  and  his 
associates.  None  knew  better  than  they  did  that  al- 
though borrasca  had  put  them  into  possession,  a  few 
more  years  of  borrasca  would  utterly  smash  their  for- 
tunes. They  had  acted  with  singular  discretion  and 
energy,  had  originated  and  carried  out  great  concep- 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA.        169 

tions,  had  dared  to  build  their  railroad  in  the  darkest 
hour  of  their  enterprise.  What  next?  They  held  many 
an  anxious  consultation  about  the  mines.  The  bullion 
product  of  the  lode  which  had  been  $16,000,000  in 
1865  fell  to  $11,739,100  in  1866,  rose  somewhat  the 
next  year,  fell  heavily  to  $8,499,769  in  1868,  and  still 
further  to  $7,528,607  in  1869.  Fewer  tons  of  ore  were 
being  raised,  and  the  ore  was  of  lower  value.  The 
"  bonanza  raisins  "  in  the  great  Comstock  plum  pud- 
ding, to  use  a  comparison  once  made  by  John  W. 
Mackay,  were  taken  out,  and,  so  far  as  any  one  knew, 
there  might  be  no  more.  In  fact,  the  most  experienced 
miners  now  held  that  any  future  deposits  of  ore  would 
be  smaller  and  leaner  than  before.  Mining  observa- 
tions elsewhere  had  seemed  to  show  that  there  was  a 
line  a  few  hundred  feet  down  that  marked  the  limit 
of  pay  ore.  Besides,  the  Comstock  lode  was  different 
from  any  other  in  the  impossibility  of  tracing  much 
if  any  connection  between  one  ore  body  and  another. 
The  ores  as  the  mines  descended  were  not  only  poorer 
but  more  refractory,  and  the  quartz  "  gangue,"  or  vein 
matter,  was  changing  to  carbonate  and  sulphate  of  lime, 
which  seldom  contained  ore. 

There  had  been  eleven  bonanzas  up  to  1869,  and  all 
of  these  were  now  nearly  exhausted.  Ophir  was  with- 
out pay  ore;  Gould  and  Curry  and  Yellow  Jacket  were 
yielding  less  than  one  fourth  their  usual  product;  at 
the  south  end  even  the  richest  of  the  Gold  Hill  mines 
were  in  a  bad  way.  The  solitary  cause  for  hopefulness 
was  the  fact  that  a  very  narrow  vein  of  promising  ore, 
a  mere  stringer  that  might  develop  into  something 
better,  had  been  found  in  Yellow  Jacket  in  November, 
1868.  It  was  on  the  900-foot  level,  and  had  been  care- 
fully studied  by  all  the  members  of  the  syndicate,  but 
for  some  time  it  led  to  nothing.  A  struggle  with  the 


170  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Miners'  Union  and  a  disastrous  fire  in  the  mines  added 
still  greater  intensity  to  the  situation.  Some  of  the 
members  of  the  syndicate  began  to  weaken  toward  the 
end  of  1870;  it  was  whispered  everywhere  that  the 
Comstock  had  paid  its  last  dividend;  the  cities  on  the 
lode  were  already  trembling  upon  the  verge  of  panic — 
when  an  apparently  barren  portion  of  the  Comstock 
became  of  the  first  importance. 

Crown  Point  mine,  540  feet  on  the  lode,  had  paid 
no  dividends  for  some  time;  had  in  fact  levied  $240,- 
000  assessments.  The  superintendent  was  the  noted 
John  P.  Jones,  since  United  States  Senator,  an  old 
Californian  who  had  been  in  Nevada  only  a  short  time. 
From  the  spring  of  1868  till  November,  1870,  he  had 
hunted  in  vain  for  ore  by  drifts  on  the  900-,  the  1,000-, 
and  the  1,100-foot  levels.  Everywhere  were  barren 
quartz  and  porphyry.  The  stock  fell  to  a  price  which 
rated  the  total  value  of  the  mine  with  its  $140,000  in- 
vested in  machinery  alone  at  only  $24,000;  the  owners 
would  not  pay  another  assessment.  But  late  in  1870 
the  character  of  the  rock  in  a  new  drift  that  Super- 
intendent Jones  was  running  showed  slight  changes. 
The  hard,  gray  porphyry  that  the  miners  had  been 
cutting  through  in  every  direction  for  years  began  to 
grow  softer,  with  streaks  of  quartz  and  red,  rusty  lines. 
Some  two  hundred  and  forty  feet  from  the  beginning 
of  the  drift  a  seam  of  clay  was  found.  They  cut  this, 
and  soft  white  quartz  was  entered  which  proved  to  con- 
tain small  knobs  of  ore.  The  value  of  the  stock  rose  to 
ninety  dollars  on  the  strength  of  this  promise.  By 
May  a  cross-cut  from  the  1,200-foot  level  entered  the 
same  formation,  and  the  price  of  shares  went  to  one 
hundred  and  eighty  dollars. 

Alvinza  Hayward,  receiving  private  information, 
began  to  purchase  at  two  dollars  a  share,  and  finally  ob- 


BORRASCA  AND  BONANZA. 

tained  control  of  the  mine,  but  he  did  this  as  an  individ- 
ual, not  as  a  member  of  the  famous  Bank  of  California 
syndicate.  This  was  Sharon's  first  and  almost  only  de- 
feat during  his  career  on  the  Comstock.  The  Union 
Mill  and  Mining  Company  lost  because  Crown  Point 
made  contracts  elsewhere,  and  its  new  owners  organized 
the  Nevada  Mill  and  Mining  Company  as  a  rival  to  the 
Bank  of  California. 

But  the  lesser  defeat  was  merely  an  incident  of  the 
larger  success  of  Sharon  and  his  group.  Every  other 
mine  on  the  lode  became  much  more  valuable.  Money 
poured  into  the  emptied  treasuries  of  the  mining  com- 
panies still  in  borrasca,  and  the  Bank  of  California 
was  placed  out  of  danger  for  the  first  time  in  several 
years. 

Crown  Point  was  one  of  the  Gold  Hill  group.  Its 
bonanza  increased  the  total  yield  of  the  district  from 
upward  of  eight  millions  in  1870  to  upward  of  eleven 
millions  in  1871,  and  this  total,  swelled  by  contribu- 
tions from  other  mines  that  had  begun  to  get  into  the 
line  of  deep  bonanzas,  was  $13,569,000  in  1872.  The 
total  yield  of  Crown  Point  between  May,  1864,  and  May, 
1877,  is  estimated  as  close  upon  twenty-five  million  dol- 
lars. Crown  Point  stock  reached  its  highest  point  in 
1872,  when  it  sold  for  $1,825  a  share — a  valuation  of 
about  twenty-two  millions  for  a  property  that  only 
eighteen  months  earlier  had  been  rated  at  $24,000. 
This  shows  the  popular  estimate  of  the  new  bonanza. 

Thus,  as  we  have  seen,  the  period  of  litigation  over 
the  surface  bonanzas  was  followed  by  a  long  and  almost 
universal  depression  in  the  values  of  the  various  mines, 
which  was  suddenly  ended  by  discoveries  made  in  a 
hitherto  barren  mass  of  porphyry.  The  uses  and  op- 
portunities of  mining  adversity  were  never  more  evi- 
dent, for  the  period  of  borrasca  enabled  the  Bank  of 


172  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

California  syndicate  to  accomplish  what  would  have 
been  impossible  a  few  years  earlier  or  a  few  years  later. 
A  new  group  of  men  had  found  their  longed-for  oppor- 
tunity and  had  many  times  multiplied  their  fortunes 
by  the  dangerous  venture.  Even  Sharon  in  the  ful- 
ness of  his  power  could  not  prevent  others  from  sharing 
in  the  results  of  his  organizing  abilities;  and  although 
he  had  long  planned  to  be  master  of  every  bonanza  on 
the  lode,  through  prior  information  and  larger  capital 
than  his  associates,  he  was  finally  conquered  by  Jones 
and  Hayward  in  the  struggle  for  Crown  Point. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

DAYS  OF  THE   GREAT  BONANZA. 

THE  discovery  of  Crown  Point's  bonanza  in  1870 
had  increased  the  value  of  all  the  mines  on  the  Corn- 
stock  by  about  $45,000,000.  A  still  greater  bonanza 
— the  one  by  which  the  fame  of  Nevada  was  spread 
abroad  in  every  land  and  every  tongue — was  near  dis- 
covery, even  while  Senator  Jones  was  running  the  fate- 
ful drift  that  raised  Crown  Point  stock  within  a  year 
from  $2  a  share  to  $1,825  and  lifted  stock  of  Belcher, 
the  adjoining  mine,  from  $1.50  a  share  to  $1,525. 

Even  while  Hayward  and  Jones  were  dividing  con- 
trol of  the  productive  mines  of  the  lode  with  Sharon 
and  other  members  of  the  Bank  of  California  syndicate, 
two  Irishmen,  John  W.  Mackay  and  James  G.  Fair, 
were  obtaining  the  fulcrum  upon  which  to  poise  and 
turn  to  their  own  purposes  the  most  valuable  portions 
of  the  whole  Comstock  lode.  Three  San  Francisco 
men — James  C.  Flood,  William  S.  O'Brien,  and  J.  M. 
Walker — were  soon  joined  with  them  in  mining  enter- 
prises. Flood  and  O'Brien  had  been  retailing  liquors 
in  a  large  San  Francisco  saloon.  Walker  soon  sold  out 
his  interest  to  Mackay  for  $3,000,000,  lost  it  in  bad  in- 
vestments, and  died  in  poverty.  The  others  became 
the  four  "bonanza  kings"  of  the  period,  and  their 
rise  forms  one  of  the  most  romantic  chapters  of  mining 
life  in  America.  It  seems  to  represent  in  a  typical  way 
the  splendid  and  fortunate  element  that  one  likes  to 

173 


174  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

think  of  as  belonging  to  every  mining  district.  It  better 
explains  the  fascination  that  abides  in  the  very  name 
"  Comstock  "  than  all  the  strange  and  interesting  de- 
tails about  the  mines  themselves. 

There  was  a  Dublin-born  youth  of  eighteen  named 
Mackay,  a  shipbuilder's  clerk  in  New  York,  who  was 
placer  mining  in  California  in  1852.  He  saved  a  little 
money  and  lost  it,  saved  a  little  more,  and  moved  to 
Virginia  City  in  1860.  Here  he  began  to  run  a  tunnel 
on  a  claim,  used  up  his  available  funds,  and  went  to  work 
in  the  Mexican  mine  as  a  timberman  underground  at 
four  dollars  a  day.  That  job  finished,  he  swung  a  shovel 
and  pick  for  the  same  wages. 

James  G.  Fair  was  a  Tyrone  lad  of  eighteen  when 
he  took  the  California  gold  fever.  He  mined  on  the 
Feather  Eiver  bars  for  several  years,  with  little  success. 
Then  he  tried  quartz,  and  became  superintendent  of 
a  Calaveras  mine.  In  1860,  like  Mackay,  he  went  to 
the  Comstock,  and  was  made  superintendent  of  the 
Ophir,  on  a  good  salary,  of  course,  but  otherwise,  seem- 
ingly, as  far  from  the  ultimate  ownership  of  any  mine 
on  the  lode  as  the  most  ordinary  miner  under  his  super- 
vision. 

In  1860  both  Fair  and  Mackay  (like  John  P.  Jones, 
the  discoverer  of  Crown  Point  bonanza)  were  poor  and 
obscure  men.  Finney,  Comstock,  O'Kiley,  McLaughlin, 
and  the  rest  of  the  first  owners  of  the  lode  had  much 
more  money  and  far  better  opportunities  than  Mackay, 
Fair,  or  Jones,  who  became  the  three  most  famous 
miners  of  the  district,  and,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  add, 
the  three  leading  silver  miners  of  America.  Flood  and 
O'Brien  were  mere  speculators,  not  miners.  They 
paid  assessments,  but  did  nothing  else  to  find  and  gather 
the  golden  harvest.  Flood  developed  great  financial 
ability,  but  O'Brien  was,  and  remained  till  the  day  of 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     175 


his  death,  a  very  commonplace  individual  of  mediocre 
talents. 

Sharon  had  come  to  the  Comstock  with  capital  in 
his  control,  so  that  at  one  time  it  was  said  he  directed 
the  management  of  every  productive  mine  and  every 
operating  mill,  besides  the  waterworks,  the  lumber  sup- 
ply, and  the  railroad — altogether  some  twenty-five  mil- 
lion dollars  of  real  property  aside  from  stock  values. 
The  new  bonanza  monarchs,  Fair  and  Mackay,  were 
about  to  raise  a  piece  of  seemingly  barren  territory, 
neglected  and  despised  by  Sharon,  to  the  rank  of  an  in- 
dependent and  more  powerful  kingdom,  so  that  the 
Bank  of  California  syndicate,  rapidly  recovering  from 
the  blow  dealt  it  by  the  defection  of  Jones  and  Hay- 
ward,  was  to  be  permanently  made  a  "second-rate 
power  "  on  the  Comstock. 

Mackay  and  Fair,  even  as  young  men,  deserved 
large  success  as  far  as  constant  labour  and  study  and 
steady  habits  may  be  said  to  deserve  it.  One  easily  sees 
that  both  were  strongly  imbued  with  the  narrow  but 
powerful  ambition  to  become  extremely  wealthy;  that 
each  in  his  especial  line  of  work — Mackay  as  a  miner, 
Fair  as  a  mining  superintendent — saved  all  he  could 
and  speculated  with  it  for  the  sole  purpose  of  becom- 
ing a  mine  owner;  and,  finally,  that  both  were  very 
hard  students  of  mines  and  of  everything  connected 
with  mines.  When  they  met,  each  recognised  in  the 
other  a  kindred  spirit,  and  they  immediately  joined 
forces. 

But  Mackay  outranks  the  rest  of  the  Comstock 
leaders,  because  his  rise  was  more  remarkable  and  his 
grasp  of  circumstances  more  firm.  From  a  day  labourer 
toiling  in  the  lower  levels  he  became  superintendent 
of  the  Caledonia  Tunnel  and  Mining  Company.  This 
was  at  Gold  Hill.  It  had  a  hundred  thousand  shares, 


176  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

had  yielded  by  1878  $345,000,  and  had  assessed  its 
stockholders  nearly  a  million  and  a  half  dollars.  A 
few  years  later  he  became  one  of  the  principal  owners 
of  Kentuck,  a  very  rich  mine  ninety-four  feet  on  the 
lode,  which  up  to  1880  had  paid  $952,000  in  excess 
of  dividends  over  assessments.  Beyond  a  doubt,  this 
purchase  was  made  because  of  Mackay's  rare  and  valu- 
able faculty  of  discerning  the  best  time  to  buy  or  to 
sell  mining  stocks.  His  cool  brain,  long  weighing  the 
chances  of  every  inch  of  explorations  in  any  mine  he 
thought  of  speculating  in,  was  steady  in  the  midst  of 
wildest  excitement.  His  own  statement  is  that  he 
sought  with  all  the  powers  of  his  mind  and  body  to  be- 
come "  master  and  manager  of  the  greatest  mines  in 
the  world."  Mackay's  swift  imagination  and  sanguine 
temperament,  controlled  by  his  ambitions,  were  secret- 
ly on  fire  with  the  possibilities  he  saw  in  the  great  lode. 
He  dreamed  and  toiled,  hoping  to  win  in  some  way 
such  power  as  Sharon  had.  Somewhere  in  that  moun- 
tain mass,  pierced  a  little  way  here  and  there  by  pin- 
holes  of  drifts,  there  doubtless  lay  another  bonanza. 
But  in  which  mine? 

After  Mackay  became  part  owner  of  Kentuck  he 
received  large  dividends  and  was  able  to  make  another 
move.  Hale  and  Nor  cross  has  been  mentioned  frequent- 
ly in  these  pages.  It  was  a  mine  from  which  much  was 
hoped  by  the  most  competent  authorities.  It  had  im- 
mense unexplored  territory  and  its  equipment  was  un- 
surpassed. Mackay  and  Fair  studied  this  mine; 
watched  its  shares  rise  early  in  1868  from  $1,260  to 
$2,100;  saw  also  a  complete  collapse,  until  by  Sep- 
tember the  price  was  less  than  forty-two  dollars  a 
share.  This  gave  them  a  chance,  and  they  controlled 
the  mine  at  the  annual  election  in  March,  1879. 
Fair,  leaving  the  Ophir,  went  in  as  superintendent, 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA. 

and  in  a  few  months  it  was  again  on  the  dividend 
list. 

Old  Comstock  miners  still  speak  with  admiration 
of  the  "  fine  nose  for  ore  "  that  Fair  displayed  as  super- 
intendent. His  watchfulness,  energy,  and  strictness  of 
discipline  were  never  surpassed  in  the  mines  of  the 
period.  He  knew  every  inch  of  the  miles  of  under- 
ground workings  as  well  as  the  rooms  of  his  own  house, 
and  far  better  than  the  miners  themselves,  each  of  whom 
stays  on  the  level  to  which  he  is  assigned.  The  new 
Hale  and  Norcross  bonanza  which  he  discovered  and 
worked  out  at  this  period  paid  $728,000  in  dividends 
in  1869  and  1870,  more  than  half  of  which,  of  course, 
went  into  the  pockets  of  himself  and  his  partners. 

One  barren  section  of  the  lode  is  between  the  Gold 
Hill  group  and  the  Virginia  City  group  of  mines.  On 
about  twenty-five  hundred  feet  here  mere  assessment 
work  had  sunk  several  million  dollars;  the  stock  was 
consequently  at  a  very  low  figure.  Mackay  had  always 
wished  to  conduct  a  thorough  exploration  of  one  of 
these  barren  mines.  In  1869  he  put  money  into  Bullion 
and  became  its  superintendent.  Fair,  a  year  later, 
was  elected  superintendent  of  Savage,  still  retaining 
his  interest  in  Hale  and  Norcross.  Four  mines  of  note 
were  now  controlled  by  Mackay,  Fair,  and  their  allies; 
and  they  were  too  shrewd  men  not  to  get  back  all  their 
investments  as  long  as  there  was  a  stock  market. 
Bullion,  however,  was  always  a  badly  named  mine; 
no  bonanza  was  ever  found  there,  nor  in  Savage.  The 
Bank  of  California  group  of  operators  began  to  feel 
better;  it  had  not  been  much  of  a  storm  anyhow.  In 
a  few  years  more  the  million  or  so  that  Mackay,  Fair, 
and  the  others  had  made  by  accident  or  by  speculation 
would  be  sunk  in  unproductive  mines.  Mackay  would 
be  back  in  the  face  of  a  drift  at  four  dollars  a  day;  Fair, 


178  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

who  was  somewhat  of  a  superintendent,  could  be  made 
very  useful  if  he  would  only  give  up  his  notions  of  being 
an  independent  owner.  Meanwhile  the  Mackay  firm, 
weakened  financially  but  still  undismayed,  were  de- 
termined to  thoroughly  explore  another  portion  of  the 
Comstock. 

At  the  North  End,  between  Ophir  and  Best  and 
Belcher,  there  was  a  long-neglected  chain  of  small  loca- 
tions occupying  in  the  aggregate  1,310  feet.  Only  very 
small  deposits  of  pay  ore  had  been  found  in  this  group, 
near  the  surface,  and  the  owners  had  lacked  capital 
for  extensive  explorations.  Still,  the  neglected  1,310 
feet  lay  in  the  midst  of  rich  property.  Beginning  at 
the  north  end  of  the  Comstock  and  coming  south, 
toward  Gold  Hill,  Sierra  Nevada  held  3,300  feet,  and, 
although  paying  no  dividends,  was  being  magnificently 
conducted,  exploring  every  foot  of  its  territory,  and 
had  its  great  shaft  well  down  in  the  second  thousand 
feet  of  distance.  Next  came  Union  Consolidated  with 
600  feet,  followed  by  Mexican,  of  equal  size.  Ophir, 
which  came  next,  held  675  feet.  South  of  Ophir  were 
the  1,310  feet  of  neglected  claims.  Still  farther  south, 
adjoining  these  claims,  was  Best  and  Belcher  with  224: 
feet;  then  Gould  and  Curry's  921  feet  of  very  rich 
ground,  followed  by  Savage  with  its  800  feet,  and  this 
again  by  the  400  feet  of  Hale  and  Norcross.  Here 
were  two  great  groups  of  paying  mines,  equipped  in  the 
best  manner,  controlled  by  millionaires,  and  able  to 
continue  operating  through  a  long  period  of  borrasca. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  curious  facts  in  the  story  of  the 
Comstock  that  this  little  row  of  long-despised  claims, 
flanked  on  either  hand  by  great  rich  and  prosperous 
mines,  should  have  sat  so  long  disconsolate,  a  mute 
Cinderella  in  ashes  of  pioneer  hopes. 

In  the  course  of  time  several  of  these  minor  claims 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     179 

were  united  into  Consolidated  Virginia,  710  feet  on 
the  lode.  Then  the  new  owners  spent  $200,000  in  vain 
prospecting  till  the  shareholders  refused  to  pay  another 
assessment.  By  February,  1871,  actual  sales  showed 
that  the  mine  was  worth  only  $26,000,  or  less  than  a 
quarter  of  the  price  of  the  machinery.  As  for  Cali- 
fornia ground,  the  600  feet  between  Ophir  and  Consoli- 
dated Virginia,  it  had  now  sunk  even  lower  in  public 
estimation.  The  entire  1,310  feet  was  a  bankrupt  piece 
of  property  worth  in  the  market  less  than  $40,000,  as 
shown  by  occasional  sales;  really  not  worth  half  so 
much,  good  operators  said,  for  an  investment  or  as  a 
speculation. 

Mackay,  Fair,  Flood,  and  O'Brien,  regretting  their 
losses  in  Bullion,  had  resolved  to  stake  their  fortunes 
upon  the  exploration  of  this  comparatively  virgin 
ground  to  great  depths.  The  four  operators  began 
to  gather  in  stock,  but  even  the  most  consummate 
skill  and  caution  could  not  secure  control  at  the  lowest 
figure — that  of  less  than  $40,000  for  the  whole  1,310 
feet.  They  paid,  it  is  said,  about  $100,000  before  they 
were  satisfied  to  announce  their  control,  by  which  time 
they  had  about  three  fourths  of  the  stock  of  both  Cali- 
fornia and  Consolidated  Virginia  locked  up  in  their 
safes,  and  they  took  possession  in  January,  1872. 

The  new  mine  owners  first  turned  their  attention  to 
the  development  of  the  710  feet  known  as  Consolidated 
Virginia.  During  1872  they  levied  assessments  to  the 
amount  of  $212,000  upon  Consolidated  Virginia  stock 
and  spent  it  all  in  development.  They  sank  a 
large  shaft  and  pushed  a  drift  north  from  Gould  and 
Curry  through  Best  and  Belcher  (1,167  feet  below  the 
surface)  into  the  ground  of  Consolidated  Virginia. 
This  was  done,  of  course,  under  especial  arrangements 
with  the  owners  of  those  mines. 
13 


180  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Fair  was  superintendent,  and  at  last,  in  driving 
this  costly  drift  through  barren  rock,  his  experienced 
eye  discovered  a  slight  change  and  a  narrow  seam  of 
rich  ore  hardly  thicker  than  a  knife-blade.  He  ordered 
the  men  to  follow  it  with  the  drift  inch  by  inch  through 
the  vein  matter.  They  did  so,  even  where  only  a  film 
of  clay  showed  where  the  thin  ore  streak  had  "  pinched 
out."  After  a  while  the  slender  clew  was  again  picked 
up,  and  so  Fair  and  his  workmen  followed  the  dark 
line  of  silver  sulphurets  through  the  labyrinths  for 
hundreds  of  feet.  Fair  became  ill,  and  the  drift,  though 
managed  by  old  and  experienced  miners,  was  run  far 
east  of  the  clew  while  he  was  absent,  but  on  his 
return  he  went  back  and  picked  up  the  ore  thread. 
The  drift  was  now  a  hundred  feet  into  Consolidated 
Virginia  without  anything  of  importance  having  been 
found.  The  value  of  the  mine,  which  had  greatly  in- 
creased when  the  four  bold  speculators  gained  con- 
trol, began  to  decrease,  and  it  was  thought  that  out- 
siders would  hardly  stand  another  assessment. 

While  matters  were  in  this  condition  and  people 
were  saying  that  the  daring  operators  had  come  to 
grief,  the  metallic  film  so  long  followed  by  Fair  with  his 
"  fine  nose  for  ore  "  rapidly  widened  to  a  seven-foot 
vein  averaging  sixty  dollars  to  the  ton.  Cutting  across 
this  vein  and  extending  the  cut  at  each  side,  two  nar- 
rower veins  were  found.  After  a  month's  further 
progress  the  main  vein  was  twelve  feet  wide.  -The  shaft 
which  was  to  reach  this  ore  body  was  being  pushed 
night  and  day  until  early  in  October  it  reached  the  de- 
sired point,  and  the  exploration  of  the  ore  body  was  then 
carried  on  with  system.  Where  the  shaft  struck  ore, 
at  the  depth  of  1,167  feet,  the  width  of  the  body  was 
now  forty  feet.  The  miners  were  not  yet  "  in  bonanza/' 
but  they  felt  themselves  very  near  to  it.  Plenty  of  pay 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     181 

ore  was  in  sight,  and  they  had  an  ore  body  of  unknown 
size  to  explore,  measure,  and  assay  before  taking  it  out. 
Running  a  drift  southeast  from  the  bottom  of  the  shaft 
for  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet,  it  cut  into  a  very  rich 
body  of  ore,  a  true  bonanza,  as  they  knew  at  once, 
though  they  were  of  course  ignorant  of  its  extent. 

It  was  high  time  to  have  some  recompense  for  years 
of  costly  and  unremunerative  exploration.  On  October 
16th  the  skilled  and  athletic  miners  began  to  "  breast 
out "  and  extract  the  ore  in  the  chamber.  By  the  end 
of  the  month  they  had  hewn  out  a  space  twenty  feet 
high  and  fifty-four  feet  across  the  bonanza,  supporting 
it  with  square  sets  of  timbers  as  fast  as  they  removed 
the  ore.  They  had  also  extended  the  drift  one  hundred 
and  forty  feet  farther  through  the  vein,  and  every 
inch  of  it  was  still  in  ore.  The  sides,  the  floors,  and 
the  roofs  of  chamber  and  of  drift  assayed  everywhere 
at  rates  that  ranged  from  $90  to  $630  per  ton.  The 
top  had  been  pried  off  from  Nature's  huge  treasure- 
vault. 

October  was  a  month  of  such  work  as  had  never 
been  seen  before  on  the  Comstock  or  in  any  other  mine 
known  to  history,  and  it  was  only  the  beginning  of 
still  greater  exploits  of  disciplined  labour,  as  shifts 
of  brawny  men,  stripped  to  the  waist,  toiled  in  the 
depths  in  the  way  that  sailors  toiled  at  Trafalgar  be- 
tween the  decks  of  fighting  ships  of  the  British  line. 
The  shaft  was  sunk  steadily  three  feet  a  day,  and  at 
the  1,200-foot  level  a  drift  showed  that  the  ore  body 
continued  and  grew  wider.  By  this  time  it  began  to 
be  said  in  Virginia  City  that  the  Consolidated  Virginia 
"  had  a  good  mine."  That  was  all.  The  matter  was 
kept  so  quiet  that  no  excitement  occurred  in  the  stock 
market.  The  directors  had  met,  however,  and  had 
increased  the  capital  stock  of  Consolidated  Virginia  to 


182  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

108,000  shares  of  $100  each;  they  soon  put  the  Cali- 
fornia upon  the  same  basis,  and  retained  control  in 
both  mines.  Consolidated  Virginia  was  taking  out 
two  hundred  tons  of  ore  a  day  at  the  close  of  October, 
and  in  a  short  time  the  bullion  shipments  were  $250,- 
000  a  month. 

The  work  of  exploration  went  on,  and  the  immen- 
sity of  the  ore  body  was  more  and  more  plainly  revealed 
through  the  winter  of  1873  and  the  spring  and  summer 
of  1874.  The  bonanza  was  cut  across  at  a  depth  of 
1,400  feet,  and  also  at  the  1,500-foot  level,  in  1874. 
Here  the  ore  was  of  such  unparalleled  richness  that 
for  the  first  time  the  outside  world  of  mining  men 
and  speculators  began  to  talk  about  it.  How  much 
farther  it  might  extend  in  depth  or  width,  or  how 
many  of  the  North-End  mines  might  finally  be  found 
to  have  a  slice  of  it,  not  even  the  skill  of  the  four 
bonanza  owners  could  determine.  But  so  carefully 
and  steadily  had  the  work  progressed  that  no  one  had 
been  startled  by  the  sudden  development.  The  richest 
hoard  of  gold  and  silver  that  had  ever  dazzled  the  eyes 
of  a  treasure-seeker  caused  for  a  time  less  excitement 
than  the  every-day  strikes  in  small  mines. 

The  truth  is,  Mackay  and  Fair  were  not  interested 
at  this  time  in  the  stock  market.  They  had  control, 
and  all  they  wanted  was  to  be  let  alone.  They  were 
not  speculators  any  more;  they  were  simply  miners; 
neither  of  the  mines  were  for  sale,  nor  did  they  care 
to  buy  any  more  mines.  Their  restless  ambitions,  so 
long  unfulfilled,  wished  to  reap  golden  harvests  from 
acres  of  ore.  There  was  so  little  attempt  at  conceal- 
ment, in  sharp  contrast  with  the  course  that  had  been 
pursued  in  regard  to  the  earlier  bonanzas,  that  it  is 
probable  this  really  caused  the  apathy  that  long  pre- 
vailed among  the  masses  of  stock  speculators.  When 


Down  in  a  Gold  Mine. 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     183 

the  capital  of  Consolidated  Virginia  was  increased  to 
108,000  shares  they  sold  at  about  forty-five  dollars, 
gradually  rising  to  par  value  ($100),  and  early  in  No- 
vember, 1874,  to  $115.  Shares  in  California  were 
much  cheaper,  and  in  September,  1874,  had  only 
reached  $37. 

There  were  "  short  turns  "  and  speculations  num- 
berless in  the  stock  during  the  year  and  a  half  that 
followed  the  ore-find  of  March,  1873,  but,  all  in  all, 
the  inability  of  the  stock  speculators,  both  leaders  and 
masses,  to  comprehend  the  greatness  of  the  discovery 
seems  inexplicable.  It  is  better  to  reverse  the  point 
of  view  and  say  that  we  have  in  this  fact  another  fine 
illustration  of  the  uncertainties  of  mining.  Sharon 
and  all  his  group  of  allies,  and  the  shrewdest  of  outside 
San  Francisco  speculators,  thought  for  months  that 
the  gigantic  energies  spent  in  further  explorations 
in  Consolidated  Virginia  was  because  the  ore  body 
was  not  very  large  after  all,  and  because  new  deposits 
were  being  sought  for.  As  soon  as  they  became  con- 
vinced that  the  bonanza  was  really  unprecedented  in 
magnitude  they  hastened  to  buy  heavily,  but  by  this 
time  the  general  public  had  been  roused  to  a  sudden 
fever  of  excitement  and  the  value  of  the  famous  mines 
rose  every  hour  on  the  stock  boards.  In  December, 
1874,  Consolidated  Virginia  reached  $610  per  share, 
rising  again  in  January  to  $700,  which  made  the  sell- 
ing value  of  the  mine  $75,600,000.  California  stock 
went  even  higher,  for  it  was  said  that  the  bonanza  ex- 
tended over  from  Consolidated  Virginia  in  such  a  way 
as  to  give  the  California  mine  the  larger  part.  Cali- 
fornia shares  worth  $37  in  September  rose  to  $780 
in  January,  1875,  making  the  valuation  of  that  mine 
$84,240,000.  The  1,310  feet  on  the  lode  which  had 
been  valued  five  years  before  at  forty  or  fifty  thousand 


184:  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

dollars  was  now  worth  in  the  market,  according  to  stock 
sales,  about  $160,000,000. 

Leaving  the  stock  market,  let  us  return  to  the 
depths  of  Consolidated  Virginia.  During  1874 
the  miners  had  been  searching  systematically  through 
the  ore  bodies.  They  made  drifts  and  crosscuts  on 
each  level,  extending  their  work  far  north  into  the 
California;  they  made  winzes  from  level  to  level  to  use 
in  removing  ore.  They  proved  that  the  width  of  the 
mass  was  from  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  three  hundred 
and  twenty  feet,  and  that  the  richness  continued  with- 
out abatement  through  drift  after  drift,  level  below 
level.  The  ore  output  increased,  and  a  dividend  of 
three  dollars  a  share  declared  in  May,  1874,  had  been 
followed  by  others.  "  The  scene  within  this  imperial 
treasure-house,"  writes  Mr.  Lord,  "  was  a  stirring  sight. 
Cribs  of  timber  were  piled  in  successive  stages  from 
basement  to  dome,  four  hundred  feet  above,  and  every- 
where men  were  at  work  in  changing  shifts,  descending 
and  ascending  in  the  crowded  cages,  clambering  up 
to  their  assigned  stopes  with  swinging  lanterns  or 
flickering  candles,  picking  and  drilling  the  crumbling 
ore  or  pushing  lines  of  loaded  cars  to  the  stations  on 
the  shaft.  Flashes  of  exploding  powder  were  blazing 
from  the  rent  faces  of  the  stopes;  blasts  of  gas  and 
smoke  filled  the  connecting  drifts;  muffled  roars  echoed 
along  the  dark  galleries;  and  at  all  hours  a  hail  of  rock 
fragments  might  be  heard  rattling  on  the  floor  of  a 
level,  and  massive  lumps  of  ore  falling  heavily  on  the 
slanting  pile  at  the  foot  of  the  breast." 

When  the  fifteen-hundred-foot  level  was  reached 
and  the  ore  cut  into  was  richer  than  ever  before  known 
on  the  Comstock,  the  Territorial  Enterprise,  of  Virginia 
City,  came  out  with  double-leaded  columns,  under  the 
heading  of  Heart  of  the  Comstock.  Of  the  lowest  cross- 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     185 

cut  the  Enterprise  said:  "  It  has  been  bored  into  the 
bonanza  through  a  mass  of  chloride  and  sulphuret  ores 
which  excites  the  imagination  of  all  beholders.  It  is 
now  in  two  hundred  and  five  feet,  ninety-five  of  which 
is  in  the  extraordinarily  rich  ore  of  which  so  much  has 
been  heard.  In  this  crosscut  was  encountered,  a  day  or 
two  since,  the  stephanite,  a  species  of  ore  that  is  almost 
pure  silver.  At  the  distance  of  one  hundred  and  eighty 
feet  from  the  crosscut  a  chamber  of  about  ten  feet  each 
way  has  been  excavated.  Its  walls  on  every  side  are  a 
mass  of  the  finest  chloride  ore  filled  with  streaks  and 
bunches  of  the  richest  black  sulphurets.  It  looks  as 
if  the  whole  mass  grew  richer  with  every  foot  of  the 
advance."  Ores  of  this  kind  assay  up  into  the  thou- 
sands of  dollars,  but  it  seemed  impossible  that  such 
large  masses  of  silver  should  have  been  deposited,  even 
in  the  Comstock,  so  the  Enterprise  reporter  brought 
his  estimates  down  to  one  hundred  dollars  a  ton,  re- 
duced the  size  of  the  deposit,  and  figured  out  $116,- 
748,000  in  sight. 

It  is  no  secret  on  the  Comstock  that  this  reporter 
was  William  Wright,  widely  known  on  the  Pacific  coast 
as  "  Dan  De  Quille,"  one  of  the  best  living  writers  on 
mining  subjects.  He  had  been  through  and  through 
the  mines  hundreds  of  times,  and  had  really  made  the 
reputation  of  the  Enterprise  for  accurate  mining  news. 
There  was  no  one  else  to  do  his  work;  if  he  went  away 
for  a  vacation,  the  proprietors  were  pretty  sure  to  tele- 
graph that  his  substitute  "was  getting  fooled  every 
day  underground,"  and  he  had  to  hurry  back  again. 
He  was  the  first  outsider  to  see  the  great  ore  body,  and 
his  own  account  of  the  circumstances  under  which 
he  received  an  invitation  to  examine  it  is  very  char- 
acteristic. 

"  The  San  Francisco  newspapers,"  said  he  when 


186       THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

interviewed,  "had  been  saying  for  a  long  time  that 
there  was  no  ore  in  Consolidated  Virginia;  that  people 
were  getting  up  a  stock  deal.  Some  of  us  happened 
to  know,  however,  that  Fair  had  been  quietly  taking 
ore  out  of  the  mine  through  the  old  Bonner  shaft. 
One  day  he  drove  up  to  the  Enterprise  office  and 
came  in. 

" '  Those  city  papers  have  been  abusing  us  long 
enough/  he  remarked;  'I  won't  stand  it!  Where's 
Dan?  I  want  him  to  go  down  to  the  mine.  I'll  show 
him  what  we're  doing.' 

"  This  was  before  any  one  had  definite  knowledge 
of  the  strike.  It  was  before  the  Enterprise  had  printed 
anything  important,  you  understand — only  rumours 
or  street  talk.  When  I  had  been  in  the  mine  before 
I  could  not  get  into  those  drifts.  Fair  spoke  pretty 
loud,  as  if  he  only  wanted  to  shut  up  the  city  papers, 
but  probably  he  had  all  the  stock  he  wanted  and  had 
just  got  ready  to  tell  the  truth;  I  don't  know.  Any- 
way, I  jumped  up  and  ran  out  when  I  had  the  word; 
you  never  saw  a  reporter  go  faster.  We  drove  to  the 
mine  and  went  down  to  the  richest  place  in  the 
bonanza. 

"Fair  said:  '  Go  in  and  climb  around.  Look  all  you 
want,  measure  it  up,  make  up  your  own  mind;  I  won't 
tell  you  a  thing;  people  will  say  I  posted  you! '  And  so 
he  went  away.  That  just  suited  me.  After  I  was 
through  I  went  to  the  Enterprise  office  and  wrote  two 
articles,  one  of  which  you  have  just  quoted  from.  That 
was  the  first  authentic  account  of  the  big  bonanza,  and 
that  was  the  way  the  Enterprise  had  a  scoop." 

A  little  later  a  visitor  to  the  mine  "  stood  where 
the  miners  were  digging  ore,  and  looked  a  hundred 
feet  upward  and  on  each  side  across  the  ore  body.  On 
all  sides  of  a  pyramidal  mass  of  timbers,  growing  larger 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     187 

each  moment  under  the  toil  of  busy  hands,  were  twin- 
kling stars  of  lamps  where  men  were  hewing  at  the  sides 
and  ceiling."  Often  the  sides  of  the  huge  cavern 
glistened  as  if  set  with  silver;  but  this  was  not  silver 
— only  crystals  of  iron  and  copper  pyrites.  There  were 
also  great  masses  of  blue,  purple,  and  white  crystals 
of  quartz,  some  of  them  weighing  many  pounds,  with 
crystals  several  inches  long.  The  miners  say  of  a  vein 
that  contains  such  crystals  that  "  it  is  alive  "  and  think 
that  the  best  of  signs  of  a  large  bonanza.  Chloride 
silver  ore  is  pale-green  and  steel-gray  in  colour.  "  Sil- 
ver glance  "  is  black  and  lustrous.  The  general  colour 
scheme  of  the  great  bonanza,  despite  an  occasional 
glitter  of  crystals,  ranged  from  bluish  gray  to  deep 
black. 

All  of  the  contents  of  the  bonanza  were  sent  to  the 
mill  just  as  it  was  blasted  or  hewn  out.  Some  of  the  ore 
was  so  rich  that  waste  rock  and  low-grade  ore  were 
mixed  with  it  in  order  to  work  it  better.  An  average 
block  of  ore  three  feet  square  contained  from  three  hun- 
dred to  five  hundred  dollars  in  silver  and  gold.  Even  in 
the  widest  part  of  the  ore  body,  three  hundred  feet 
across,  the  entire  contents  were  milled  without  assort- 
ing. Some  of  the  richest  ore  was  near  the  line  of  the 
California  mine,  where  a  mass  of  porphyry  crowded  the 
ore  into  less  space.  The  silver  here  was  often  in  the 
form  of  crystals  of  stephanite,  or  in  bunches  of  pure 
and  malleable  silver,  in  coiled  wires,  and  in  silver  crys- 
tals. There  is  hardly  any  more  beautiful  sight  in  a  mine 
than  a  "  nest "  of  wire  gold  or  wire  silver  gleaming  in 
the  dark  sulphurets.  A  few  of  the  more  exquisite  com- 
binations of  metals  and  crystals  that  occur  at  times  in 
mines  of  the  first  rank  are  still  preserved  in  cabinets, 
but  by  far  the  greater  part  have  been  destroyed,  sent 
to  the  mill  if  valuable  mineral,  or  to  the  dump  heap  if 


188  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

unremunerative.  Old  miners  in  some  of  the  famous 
mines  tell  stories  of  cavities  as  large  as  an  ordinary 
room  into  which  a  drift  will  sometimes  break;  cavi- 
ties set  thick  with  rock  crystals  of  every  beautiful  colour 
known  to  the  mineralogist — white,  pale  pink,  olive- 
green,  rose,  purple,  or  violet.  In  such  a  glorious  place 
it  seems,  even  to  the  ignorant  miners,  as  if  the  jewel 
caskets  of  monarchs  had  been  surpassed,  for  here  Na- 
ture has  the  hues  of  sapphire,  emerald,  tourmaline, 
amethyst,  chrysoprase,  opal,  and  lapis  lazuli.  Such 
crystal  rooms  are  extremely  rare,  and  more  often  occur 
in  New  Mexico  and  Sonora  than  in  Nevada  districts. 
One  ore  chamber  ten  feet  square,  situated  about  four- 
teen feet  south  of  the  California  line,  seemed  to  Com- 
stockers  the  richest  part  of  the  lode,  and  many  speci- 
mens of  ore  from  here  were  saved  for  collectors  in  vari- 
ous parts  of  the  world. 

Now  that  the  Pacific  coast  was  stirred  with  the 
great  news,  estimates  of  the  actual  "ore  in  sight" 
began  to  be  in  order.  I  have  alluded  to  the  first  news- 
paper estimate  of  about  $116,000,000.  Next  came 
Mr.  Diedesheimer,  the  inventor  of  the  "square- 
set  system"  and  one  of  the  most  careful  mining  en- 
gineers on  the  Pacific  coast.  He  reported  to  the 
directors  that  there  was  $1,500,000,000  in  sight,  and 
added  that  each  mine  ought  to  pay  in  dividends  $5,000 
a  share  under  proper  management.  A  little  later  he 
gave  proof  of  his  faith  in  his  own  report  by  putting 
every  dollar  he  could  raise  into  shares  in  the  two  mines 
at  the  highest  price.  Even  the  director  of  the  Carson 
mint,  with  his  assistants,  who  examined  the  bonanza, 
was  unable  to  fix  any  definite  limit  to  its  yield,  and 
thought  there  was  not  less  than  $300,000,000  already 
in  sight.  Mackay,  however,  a  miner  of  unsurpassed 
judgment,  utterly  refused  to  make  any  estimate,  and 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     189 

flatly  said  it  was  an  impossible  task,  because  barren 
masses  of  rock,  porphyry,  the  difficulty  of  obtaining 
accurate  assays,  and  many  other  elements  of  uncer- 
tainty made  calculation  absurd.  He  "preferred  to 
mine  it  out  first  and  then  take  the  milling  returns." 

The  public  made  loud  demands  for  estimates,  and 
for  a  thousand  other  details,  often  beyond  the  power 
of  human  ability  to  satisfy.  "Whatever  was  said  or  was 
left  unsaid,  the  men  who  controlled  the  bonanza  were 
abused  and  misrepresented.  That  was  a  part,  and  no 
small  part,  of  the  price  they  had  to  pay  for  their  ful- 
filled ambitions.  Powerful  though  Mackay  and  his 
companions  were  in  their  own  field,  neither  they  nor 
any  other  men  could  control  the  genius  they  had  re- 
leased from  the  casket  of  the  bonanza.  The  actual 
available  capital  of  the  Pacific  slope  that  could  be  put 
into  mining  ventures  in  January,  1875,  was  not  greater 
than  $20,000,000.  To  tie  up  more  than  this  in  such 
investments  or  speculations  would  be  to  injure  and 
seriously  check  the  growth  of  the  western  third  of  the 
continent.  Now,  as  I  have  already  shown,  the  stock- 
board  valuation  put  upon  the  two  bonanza  mines  in 
that  month  was  $160,000,000.  It  is  not  likely  that 
more  than  a  fourth  of  the  stock  was  ever  in  the  market, 
but  the  entire  Pacific  coast,  as  above  stated,  could  not 
have  bought  and  paid  for  more  than  twenty  millions' 
worth. 

Then,  too,  in  addition  to  the  immense  and  probably 
justifiable  valuations  put  upon  the  Consolidated  Vir- 
ginia and  California,  every  other  mine  upon  the  lode 
had  greatly  risen  in  estimated  value.  The  prices  paid 
in  January,  1875,  showed  that  Ophir  had  risen  to  over 
$31,000,000  because  it  was  next  to  the  bonanza  mines; 
Best  and  Belcher  was  rated  at  nearly  $9,000,000,  and 
Mexican  a  trifle  higher;  Gould  and  Curry,  Savage, 


190  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Exchequer,  Yellow  Jacket,  Overman,  Bullion,  Crown 
Point,  and  several  others  were  valued  at  from  three 
to  twenty  millions  apiece.  It  made  little  or  no  differ- 
ence where  they  were  located.  Indeed,  the  theory  was 
now  held  by  most  speculators  that  every  so-called  "  bar- 
ren "  place  in  the  lode  would  prove  to  have  immense 
ore  bodies  somewhere  below  the  thousand-foot  level. 
The  total  valuation  of  all  the  mines  on  the  lode  at 
this  date  was  $393,253,440.  How  much  gold  coin 
would  really  have  been  needed  at  this  time  to  buy  not 
merely  the  floating  stock  in  the  market,  but  also 
enough  to  control  every  mine  on  the  lode  is  hardly 
to  be  estimated.  There  was  not  enough  coin  in 
America. 

Evidently,  even  if  all  the  Comstock  mines  had  been 
worth  the  price  asked,  California  and  the  rest  of  the 
Pacific  coast  did  not  have  a  tenth  part  of  the  available 
capital  to  sustain  such  a  valuation.  When  the  trans- 
fers at  only  one  of  the  three  stock  boards  were  $50,- 
000,000  for  a  single  month,  it  is  evident  that  the  pace 
had  been  set  pretty  fast,  for  prices  had  now  become 
so  high  that  nearly  every  one  was  compelled  to  buy  on 
a  margin;  there  was  not  money  enough  to  do  otherwise. 
Naturally  the  "  shorts "  had  their  innings.  A  few 
stories  that  the  bonanza  had  given  out  started  a  ruinous 
panic  at  the  close  of  February  that  completely  demoral- 
ized the  money  market.  Consolidated  Virginia  fell 
two  hundred  dollars  per  share  in  a  week.  California 
lost  sixty  per  cent  of  its  market  value.  Other  stocks 
on  the  lode  and  outside  fell  in  much  greater  propor- 
tion. The  result  spelled  ruin  in  large  capitals  to  thou- 
sands of  families.  The  Bank  of  California  failed  in 
August  of  that  fateful  year,  and  Ealston,  the  main- 
spring of  countless  enterprises,  died  in  the  waters  of 
San  Francisco  Bay.  The  entire  community  staggered 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     191 

under  disasters  brought  on  by  wild  speculation  in 
stocks.  It  was  the  Black  Friday  of  the  State  of  Cali- 
fornia. 

The  public  charged  Mackay,  Fair,  and  their  com- 
rades with  speculating  in  their  own  stocks,  and  so 
creating  the  alternate  panics  and  short-lived  booms 
of  the  great  bonanza  period.  Books  were  published 
— sometimes  novels,  sometimes  bitter  essays — that  de- 
scribed with  the  sarcasm  and  emphasis  or  a  Swift  innu- 
merable supposed  crimes  of  the  bonanza  kings  against 
the  rest  of  humanity.  Time,  however,  has  caused  many 
of  these  hasty  accusations  to  be  forgotten.  The  be- 
haviour of  the  new-made  plutocrats  was  not  essentially 
worse  than  the  behaviour  of  the  earlier  groups  of 
bonanza  owners.  Mackay,  the  typical  miner  of  the 
company,  kept  himself  especially  free  from  putside 
deals.  Later,  alluding  to  the  crash  in  stocks,  he  said: 
"  It  is  no  affair  of  mine.  I  am  not  speculating  in  stocks. 
My  business  is  mining — legitimate  mining.  I  see  that 
my  men  do  their  work  properly  in  the  mines  and  that 
all  goes  on  as  it  should  in  the  mills.  I  make  my  money 
here  out  of  the  ore." 

Prices  of  shares  had  no  influence  upon  the  work 
in  the  mines.  Through  good  days  and  evil  the  ore 
yield  increased.  Consolidated  Virginia  extracted  about 
12,000  tons  in  1873,  producing  in  bullion  $645,000; 
in  1874, 91,000  tons,  of  a  milling  value  of  $4,981,000; 
in  1875,  169,000  tons,  milling  over  $16,000,000;  and 
in  1876, 142,000  tons,  milling  over  $16,000,000.  Then 
the  product  began  to  lessen.  The  exact  amount  of  ore 
extracted  in  six  years  ending  with  1878  was  682,385 
tons.  The  bullion  product  was  $60,732,882.  Cali- 
fornia in  1875  and  the  three  years  following  extracted 
486,043  tons  of  ore,  which  gave  the  total  bullion  yield 
of  $43,727,831.  Nearly  $105,000,000  was  the  product 


192  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

of  the  Big  Bonanza,  as  Comstockers  have  always  called 
this  body  of  ore. 

As  for  dividends,  everything  was  done  to  increase 
them.  The  returns  to  stockholders  were  unprece- 
dented in  the  stories  of  great  mining  enterprises.  By 
the  middle  of  1879  Consolidated  Virginia  had  paid 
fifty-two  dividends  aggregating  $42,120,000,  and  Cali- 
fornia had  paid  in  dividends  $31,050,000.  A  thou- 
sand miners  were  employed;  a  new  and  much  larger 
shaft  was  sunk.  Mills  and  machinery  had  been  re- 
built and  enlarged  at  great  expense.  But  all  other 
duties  had  given  way  to  the  imperious  necessity  of  tak- 
ing out  ore  as  fast  as  possible,  so  great  were  the  dangers 
of  a  frightful  accident.  Every  difficulty  met  with  in 
removing  other  bonanzas  seemed  intensified  in  this 
case.  The  hot  clay,  feldspar,  and  ore  seethed  and 
swayed  as  the  men  worked.  Forests  of  timbers,  con- 
tinually needing  care  and  renewal,  were  rotting,  break- 
ing, and  being  crushed  together.  A  single  spark  might 
make  the  mine  a  pit  of  flame,  and  probably  would  so 
cave  and  ruin  it  that  it  could  only  be  reopened  by  years 
of  labour  and  at  vast  outlay.  Mackay,  keenly  alive 
to  the  ever-present  dangers  of  fire  and  collapse  of  the 
supports,  left  nothing  to  chance,  but  inspected  the 
drifts  in  person  night  after  night.  His  tireless  vigi- 
lance had  its  rewards,  for  no  accident  happened  until 
the  bonanza  was  fairly  worked  out.  A  few  years  later 
fires  broke  out  in  some  of  the  abandoned  levels  of  both 
the  mines,  and  the  men  bulk-headed  all  the  connecting 
drifts  so  as  to  shut  the  air  out.  The  timbers  smouldered 
for  weeks,  and  the  drifts  finally  became  totally  unfit 
for  passage — a  very  labyrinth  of  traps  and  pitfalls 
shunned  by  every  miner  to  this  day. 

After  1879,  the  close  of  the  bonanza  period  came 
with  exceeding  swiftness.  The  stock  of  the  thirty 


DAYS  OF  THE  GREAT  BONANZA.     193 

mines  on  the  lode,  valued  in  1875  at  over  $393,000,000, 
sank  in  February,  1880,  to  something  less  than  $7,- 
000,000.  California  sold  for  $1.25  a  share  and  Con- 
solidated Virginia  for  $1.90,  and  so  on  down  the  for- 
lorn list.  How  had  the  mighty  fallen!  The  great 
bonanza,  after  yielding  in  five  years  nearly  $105,000,- 
000,  was  exhausted,  and  nothing  even  approaching 
in  value  to  the  earlier  group  of  ore  bodies  has  since 
been  discovered.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  tons  of 
low-grade  rock  have  been  taken  out  of  long-neglected 
portions  of  the  mines  and  worked  at  a  profit,  small 
dividends  have  been  paid  by  a  few  mines,  and  the  work- 
ing efficiency  of  the  lode  has  been  well  maintained. 
There  may  be  new  bonanzas  in  the  depths  or  new  grains 
of  metal  hidden  in  husks  of  porphyry,  but  nothing 
of  striking  importance  has  since  been  found.  Once 
more  the  endurance  of  the  mine  owners  and  of  the 
towns  on  the  lode  is  being  severely  tested.  California 
ceased  paying  dividends  in  1879;  Consolidated  Virginia 
paid  its  last  dividend  in  1880.  Fourteen  years  of  bor- 
rasca  have  ruined  successive  stockholders,  have  caused 
the  decay  of  once-populous  mining  towns,  and  have, 
in  short,  come  near  to  breaking  the  hearts  of  the  brave 
old  Comstockers. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE   SUTEO   TUNNEL. 

IN  the  days  when  Virginia  City  was  founded  there 
came  to  the  collection  of  "  dug-outs,"  tents,  and  brush 
huts  a  young  man  of  small  means  but  boundless  energy. 
He  was  a  volunteer  in  the  Pyramid  Lake  battle  with  the 
Indians,  and  gave  one  of  the  most  lucid  and  trustworthy 
accounts  we  have  of  that  disastrous  affair.  He  was 
afterward  in  business  in  Virginia  City,  and  in  1861 
he  built  a  quartz  mill  on  the  Carson  River.  In  a  short 
time  he  became  convinced  that  a  deep  drainage  tunnel 
was  absolutely  necessary  to  the  continued  working 
of  the  great  lode  and  he  advanced  this  idea  on  every 
occasion,  until  people  began  to  consider  him  a  crack- 
brained  enthusiast. 

The  notion  appeared  to  most  men  entirely  imprac- 
ticable. The  point  at  which  Sutro  wished  to  see  the 
lode  cut  by  a  tunnel  was  nearly  two  thousand  feet  below 
the  surface — much  deeper  than  any  miners  in  the  early 
J60's  thought  it  possible  to  carry  on  operations.  He 
scorned  the  lesser  and  temporary  usefulness  of  small, 
short  tunnels  from  the  heads  of  the  adjacent  canons; 
what  he  advocated  was  a  large  tunnel  from  the  floor 
of  the  Carson  Valley,  distant  about  four  miles  in  a 
horizontal  line  from  the  lode. 

It  must  be  explained  that  a  tunnel  run  into  a  hill 
so  as  to  strike  the  ledge  at  some  point  below  the  sur- 
face is  either  for  prospecting  and  ore-handling  pur- 

194 


THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL.  195 

poses,  or  it  is  purely  a  drainage  and  ventilation  tun- 
nel, or  it  combines  to  some  extent  these  several  uses. 
A  mining  country  that  contains  high  mountains  and 
short,  steep  ravines  is  well  adapted  to  tunnels,  or  adits, 
as  mining  engineers  often  call  them.  Sometimes  they 
afford  vastly  more  economical  methods  of  opening  up 
and  working  mines  than  by  shafts,  but,  of  course,  in 
many  cases  there  is  no  opportunity  for  tunnels.  Some- 
times when  a  ledge  has  been  well  prospected  on  the 
surface  high  up  on  a  mountain  the  very  first  thing 
done  is  to  run  a  tunnel  often  several  thousand  feet  long, 
so  as  to  strike  the  ledge,  and  then  work  up  to  meet  a 
shaft  started  from  the  top.  If  this  is  five  hundred  feet 
from  the  end  of  the  tunnel,  the  miners  say  they  have 
"  five  hundred  feet  of  backs."  That  is,  they  can  take 
out  that  much  ore  by  gravity  alone,  and  so  can  handle 
it  very  cheaply. 

Three  or  four  years  of  constant  study  and  active 
work  had  already  made  Sutro  a  man  of  note  among 
his  fellows  in  that  cyclonic  vortex  of  life  and  motion — 
early  Nevada.  He  became  widely  known  as  a  man 
of  immense  capacity  for  affairs;  one  who  was  gifted 
with  unconquerable  tenacity  of  purpose  and  fertility 
of  resource.  He  gradually  organized  the  enterprise 
known  by  his  name,  and  for  twenty  years  was  one  of 
the  most  interesting  figures  in  the  story. 

Sutro  soon  gained  the  attention  of  Stewart,  Eal- 
ston,  and  others;  in  fact,  Stewart  became  president 
of  the  company  organized  in  1864  to  construct 
a  tunnel  after  Sutro's  plans.  The  first  Nevada  Legis- 
lature, in  February,  1865,  passed  an  act  granting  a 
franchise,  right  of  way,  and  other  privileges  to  Sutro 
and  his  associates.  The  amount  of  royalty  to  be  paid 
by  the  mines  that  would  be  benefited  by  the  tunnel 
was  left  to  subsequent  agreement  between  the  Tun- 
14 


196  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

nel  Company  and  the  owners  of  the  various  mines. 
After  eight  months  of  strenuous  efforts  Sutro  secured 
contracts  from  twenty-three  mining  companies,  repre- 
senting, it  is  said,  ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  whole 
market  value  of  the  lode.  In  these  contracts  the  mines 
were  bound  perpetually  to  pay  to  the  Tunnel  Company 
two  dollars  a  ton  for  every  ton  of  ore  taken  out  after 
the  tunnel  had  reached  given  points  so  that  it  could 
be  used.  The  mines  were  to  also  pay  a  fixed  rate  per 
ton  for  the  transportation  of  waste  rock,  debris,  or  any 
material  from  the  mines,  and  of  supplies  from  outside, 
besides  a  certain  price  for  each  and  every  person  in 
their  employ  who  passed  through  the  tunnel. 

The  only  requirement  of  the  State  Legislature  was 
that  Sutro  and  his  allies  should  secure  three  million 
dollars  by  August,  1867,  and  should  spend  a  certain 
amount  annually  in  the  enterprise.  As  soon  as  the 
mines  had  agreed  to  the  various  royalties  and  payments, 
which  were  considered  very  reasonable  by  all  con- 
cerned, it  seemed  as  if  the  chief  obstacle  was  removed 
and  capital  could  be  secured.  At  this  time,  early  in 
1866,  there  was  unbroken  harmony  on  the  lode  in  re- 
spect to  the  tunnel  proposition.  Sharon,  Ralston,  and 
the  newly  organized  Bank  of  California  syndicate  were 
foremost  in  approval.  Sutro  was  now  arranging  to 
obtain  the  capital,  and  Ealston  furnished  him  with 
letters  of  introduction  stating  that  the  tunnel  was  prac- 
ticable and  could  not  fail  to  be  very  profitable.  Mean- 
while Sutro,  anxious  to  protect  his  enterprise  at  every 
point,  secured  the  passage  of  an  act  of  Congress  which 
defined  and  secured  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the 
Tunnel  Company.  During  the  fiercest  of  conflicts  a 
few  years  later  this  act  of  Congress  was  all  that  saved 
the  enterprise. 

Thus  protected,  it  would  seem  as  if  the  Sutro  Tun- 


THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL.  197 

nel  Company  had  nothing  more  to  do  except  to  sell 
stock  or  bonds  and  begin  work.  The  mine  owners  had 
agreed  to  his  terms;  the  State  and  the  nation  had  given 
the  strongest  possible  title  to  its  rights,  franchises, 
and  lands.  Its  plans  were  now  completed  for  a  main 
tunnel  of  20,489  feet  from  the  Carson  Valley  to  the 
shaft  of  the  Savage  mine.  Two  lateral  tunnels  were 
afterward  planned,  following  the  trend  of  the  Corn- 
stock  northerly  and  southerly  from  the  Savage  shaft. 
As  finished,  the  total  length  of  the  main  tunnel  and  the 
laterals  is  33,315  feet,  or  about  six  and  a  third  miles. 
There  are  longer  and  more  expensive  tunnels,  but  the 
reasons  that  make  the  Sutro  Tunnel  a  remarkable 
achievement  will  appear  in  the  further  course  of  this 
narrative. 

As  soon  as  the  Tunnel  act  passed  Congress,  Mr. 
Sutro  laid  the  project  before  leading  American  capi- 
talists. He  finally  obtained  pledges  to  take  three  mil- 
lion dollars  in  stock,  provided  the  Comstockers  them- 
selves would  do  something.  Eeturning  to  Nevada 
and  California,  he  pressed  the  scheme  upon  the  mining 
companies  with  such  energy  that  they  subscribed  six 
hundred  thousand  dollars,  and  granted  him  another 
year  in  which  to  complete  negotiations  for  the  three 
million  dollars.  Never  was  a  project  more  unanimously 
supported  by  press  and  people,  by  labourers  and  capi- 
talists, as  the  Sutro  Tunnel  scheme  between  the  autumn 
of  1864  and  the  spring  of  1867. 

The  reasons  for  this  general  support  were  very  sim- 
ple. The  entire  community  followed  the  lead  of  the 
mine  owners,  managers,  and  chief  speculators  of  the 
Comstock,  who  were  supreme  in  politics,  in  social  life, 
and  in  business.  These  owners  and  speculators  had 
become  persuaded  of  the  need  of  a  tunnel,  and  were 
inclined  to  become  part  owners  in  the  enterprise  so 


198  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

as  to  share  the  expected  profits  in  royalties  and  new 
veins  to  be  discovered  on  the  line  of  the  tunnel.  Be- 
sides, the  mines  were  not  paying  well,  most  of  them 
were  in  borrasca,  and  if  that  continued  long  it  would 
become  necessary  to  reduce  expenses  in  every  possible 
way. 

Suddenly  came  a  thunderbolt  falling  from  cloud- 
less skies.  The  Bank  of  California  syndicate,  now  all- 
powerful  on  the  Comstock,  changed  its  corporate  mind, 
cancelled  the  subscriptions  of  its  various  companies, 
and  issued  a  decree  of  financial  outlawry  against  Sutro. 
The  tunnel,  it  was  said,  could  not  be  constructed — at 
least  not  by  Sutro,  nor  by  his  friends.  He  was  too  in- 
dependent and  altogether  outside  of  the  controlling 
forces  on  the  lode.  A  telegram  was  sent  to  the  Nevada 
senators,  Nye  and  Stewart,  at  Washington,  saying, 
"  We  are  opposed  to  the  Sutro  Tunnel  project  and  de- 
sire it  defeated."  This  was  signed  by  William  Sharon 
and  most  of  the  prominent  mine  owners,  managers, 
and  speculators.  Senator  Stewart  instantly  resigned 
the  presidency  of  the  Tunnel  Company.  Virginia 
City  merchants  and  citizens  began  to  fight  the  tunnel 
scheme.  Thus  Sutro's  bright  prospects  of  obtaining 
a  million  dollars  in  San  Francisco,  besides  the  money 
promised  on  the  Comstock,  were  ruined  in  an  hour. 
Everywhere,  with  telegraphic  swiftness,  active,  aggres- 
sive opposition  was  raised.  When  the  smoke  of  the 
first  tumultuous  assault  cleared  away,  all  men  saw  that 
Sutro  stood  alone,  unsupported,  while  against  him  in 
organized  and  well-equipped  array  were  the  hostile 
companies,  the  hostile  Bank  of  California,  and  the 
hostile  mining  and  speculating  communities  of  Cali- 
fornia and  Nevada. 

It  was  a  strange  and  unexpected  situation.  Only 
one  man  out  of  ten  thousand  would  have  attempted 


THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL.  199 

another  stroke;  hardly  one  out  of  a  million  could  have 
conquered  his  foes.  Every  pledge  from  New  York 
capitalists  was  of  course  nullified.  He  had  to  raise 
between  four  and  five  million  dollars  for  a  pur- 
pose that  the  very  persons  to  be  benefited  declared 
against  their  interests.  He  had  to  prove  to  investors 
that  the  Comstockers  did  not  know  their  own  business. 
He  had  to  counteract  in  the  newspapers,  in  legislatures, 
and  in  Congress  itself  the  persistent  assaults  of  men 
and  associations  possessing  almost  boundless  resources 
— social,  political,  and  financial. 

Sutro,  however,  lived  for  but  one  object — to  dig 
his  "  coyote  hole/'  as  the  contemptuous  opposition 
termed  it.  He  went  to  New  York  and  again  tried  to 
obtain  capital;  he  went  to  Europe  and  saw  the  princes 
of  finance.  Men  of  science  approved  of  his  plan,  but 
everywhere  a  warning  against  his  tunnel  seemed  to 
forerun  his  coming.  Undismayed,  he  appealed  again  to 
Congress,  secured  the  attention  of  the  Committee  on 
Mines  and  Mining,  and  actually  had  a  bill  reported 
recommending  that  the  Government  should  loan  five 
million  dollars  to  the  Tunnel  Company,  taking  a  mort- 
gage on  its  property.  The  impeachment  of  Andrew 
Johnson,  soon  after,  prevented  this  bill  from  coming 
to  a  vote.  All  this  time  the  fight  went  on  in  news- 
papers and  pamphlets  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  land,  but  chiefly  on  the  Pacific  coast. 
Sutro  answered  every  thrust  with  a  parry  and  return. 

Said  Sutro  in  conversation  years  after:  "Ah!  it 
was  a  hard  thing  to  see  so  many  old  friends  in  Virginia 
City  and  San  Francisco  actually  afraid  to  be  seen  talk- 
ing to  me  after  the  fiat  had  gone  forth  that  I  was  to 
be  crushed.  But  I  kept  on  fighting.  There  was  one 
time,  I  remember,  when  I  had  to  go  to  Washington 
to  save  my  interests  from  destruction.  I  had  no  money, 


200  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

left.  All  the  profits  of  my  mill  had  been  swallowed 
up.  I  had  a  town  lot  in  a  little  California  town,  and 
I  sold  it  for  two  hundred  dollars.  With  that  I  managed 
to  get  to  Washington.  I  staid  there,  somehow,  all 
winter,  poor  as  I  was;  I  fought  my  enemies  and  I  came 
out  ahead.  But  they  wrote  to  all  the  newspapers  that 
I  had  bribed  Congress — out  of  my  two  hundred  dol- 
lars! " 

At  last,  in  sheer  desperation,  Sutro  turned  to  the 
working  miners  of  the  Comstock.  He  hired  Piper's 
Opera  House  in  Virginia  City  and  addressed  them  with 
bitter  eloquence,  every  stroke  of  which  went  home. 
He  denounced  the  unchecked  avarice  of  the  men  who 
ruled  the  Bank  of  California  and  the  famous  Mining 
and  Milling  syndicate.  What  did  they  care  for  the 
toilers?  What  enterprise  that  tended  to  loosen  their 
grip  on  every  industry  in  Nevada  could  fail  to  gain 
their  hatred?  He  went  on  to  contrast,  in  brief,  ter- 
rible sentences,  the  disasters  from  heat  and  fire  to  which 
the  selfishness  of  these  capitalists  subjected  them  with 
the  comfort  and  safety  which  the  tunnel  would  afford. 
The  increased  profits  under  the  tunnel  system  must 
also,  he  said,  enable  the  mine  owners  to  continue  the 
Union  scale  of  wages  without  protest  for  generations 
to  come. 

Sutro  added  immeasurably  to  the  force  of  his  ap- 
peal by  showing  to  the  miners,  and  afterward  circulat- 
ing among  them,  rude  but  effective  campaign  cartoons. 
One  cartoon  represented  a  rich  speculator  driving  six 
fast  horses  and  covering  a  working  miner  with  con- 
temptuous dust;  another  showed  "Bill  Sharon's  big 
wood  pile  "  ;  and  still  another  "  Bill  Sharon's  crooked 
railroad,"  so  as  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  the  Bank  of 
California  syndicate  controlled  the  transportation  and 
owned  the  forests.  Still  other  cartoons  illustrated 


THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL.  201 

with,  ferocious  sarcasm  many  a  well-known  instance 
of  careless  disregard  of  the  health  and  lives  of  the  Corn- 
stock  miners. 

The  series  closed  with  a  huge  double  cartoon  that 
Milton  might  have  conceived  and  Dore  might  have 
executed.  A  few  months  before  there  had  been  a  fire 
in  the  Yellow  Jacket  mine  and  forty-two  miners  had 
lost  their  lives.  It  was  an  awful  disaster;  the  terror 
of  it  still  dwelt  in  the  homes  of  the  Comstock.  Fire 
was  yet  smouldering  in  the  drifts  of  the  mines  and 
likely  to  burst  forth  again,  when  Sutro  sent  forth  his 
double  cartoon,  headed  The  Yellow  Jacket  Fire.  On 
one  side  was  a  shaft  a  thousand  feet  deep  full  of  burn- 
ing and  falling  ladders,  timbers,  and  machinery,  a  vor- 
tex of  whirling  smoke  and  flame,  with  hundreds  of 
miners  trying  to  escape  and  tumbling  headlong  into 
the  depths;  wives,  mothers,  and  children  were  running 
to  the  mouth  of  the  shaft  or  sinking  in  despair  on  the 
ground.  In  the  other  half  of  the  picture  was  a  similar 
shaft  on  fire,  but  with  the  Sutro  Tunnel  connection 
below,  and  the  miners  escaping  to  meet  their  wives 
and  children. 

Here  are  some  sentences  from  Sutro's  speech:  "  Will 
the  people  of  Nevada  see  me  crushed  out  now?  Will 
you  not  see  fair  play  when  one  man  has  the  pluck  to 
stand  up  against  a  crowd?  Come  in  together;  let  three 
thousand  labouring  men  pay  in  an  average  of  ten  dol- 
lars a  month  and  insure  the  construction  of  the  tunnel, 
carrying  with  it  the  control  of  the  mines."  Again: 
"  The  enemy  who  has  spun  his  web  around  you  until 
you  are  almost  helpless  has  bribed  your  judges,  packed 
your  juries,  hired  false  witnesses,  bought  legislatures, 
elected  representatives  to  defend  their  iniquity,  im- 
posed taxes  upon  you  for  their  private  benefit,  and  now 
dares  you  to  expose  or  oppose  them.  .  .  .  I  do  not  mean 


202  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

to  incite  you  to  any  violence,  .  .  .  but  I  do  mean  to 
say  that  you  can  destroy  your  enemy  by  simple  concert 
of  action.  Let  all  of  you  join  together  to  build  the 
Sutro  Tunnel;  that  is  the  way  to  reach  them.  .  .  . 
They  know  that  the  first  pick  struck  into  the  tunnel 
will  be  the  first  pick  into  their  graves." 

Thus,  with  tremendous  invective,  Sutro  carried 
the  war  into  Africa  and  laughed  to  scorn  the  shouts 
of  "  Demagogue!  "  that  went  up  from  the  justly  alarmed 
capitalists.  He  caused  such  a  storm  that  in  a  short  time 
he  had  to  use  all  his  personal  influence  to  prevent  an 
outbreak.  But  the  Miners'  Union  raised  fifty  thousand 
dollars  by  subscription  and  put  it  into  Tunnel  Company 
stock.  This  enabled  the  resolute  Sutro  to  break  ground 
October  19,  1869.  He  now  had  to  provide  means  for 
continuing  work.  He  had  to  fight  his  opponents  in  Ne- 
vada, California,  "Washington,  New  York,  and  Europe. 
It  was  necessary,  too,  that  this  fight  should  be  aggres- 
sive; he  must  have  more  money.  In  1870  he  obtained 
the  promise  of  two  million  dollars  in  France,  but  the 
Franco-Prussian  War  destroyed  this  combination.  In 
1871  he  persuaded  Congress  to  appoint  a  commission 
of  United  States  engineers  to  examine  the  Comstock 
and  the  plans  of  the  tunnel.  They  reported  in  the  main 
unfavourably.  Such  a  report,  if  sustained  by  the  Com- 
mittee on  Mines  and  Mining,  could  only  lead  to  one 
end — the  revoking  of  the  franchise.  Sutro,  as  usual, 
rose  to  the  occasion,  and  forthwith  succeeded  in  per- 
suading the  committee  that  the  report  was  biased  by 
his  opponents;  the  committee  reversed  their  first  de- 
cision and  advocated  a  loan  of  two  million  dollars  by 
the  United  States.  This  bill  was  finally  defeated,  but 
its  very  presentation  in  Congress  was  a  victory  for 
Sutro.  Even  his  enemies  began  to  yield  unwilling 
admiration  to  his  bulldog  tenacity.  "  That  little  Ger- 


THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL.  203 

man  Jew  will  undermine  the  Comstock"  became  a 
saying  among  the  capitalists. 

In  September,  1871,  Sutro  won  his  way  to  the  purses 
of  some  English  investors  and  obtained  $1,450,000. 
This  was  afterward  increased  in  America  to  a  total  of 
two  million  dollars.  Immediately  four  hundred  men 
were  set  at  work  in  the  tunnel  and  upon  four  working 
and  ventilation  shafts.  Machinery  was  bought,  shops 
and  dwellings  sprang  up  like  mushrooms  around  the 
waste  heaps,  and  the  renewed  energies  of  this  volcanic 
man  were  concentrated  upon  a  race  against  the  Com- 
stock mine  owners  who  were  fast  approaching  the  level 
of  the  tunnel. 

There  was  no  time  set  by  the  act  of  Congress  or  any 
obligation  of  the  company  for  the  completion  of  the 
tunnel,  but  the  general  understanding  was  that  the 
main  line  should  be  finished  in  three  and  a  quarter 
years.  This  was  based  upon  the  calculations  of  the  en- 
gineers, who  proposed  to  work  from  four  shafts  as  well 
as  from  the  end  of  the  tunnel,  thus  making  nine  sepa- 
rate stopes  or  headings  besides  some  work  that  might 
be  possible  by  drifting  from  the  Comstock  lode.  But 
when  these  four  shafts  were  begun,  such  torrents  of 
water  poured  out  of  the  porous  rock  that  no  machinery 
could  be  obtained  to  keep  the  two  nearest  the  lode  clear 
enough  to  work  in;  the  other  two,  though  finally  sunk 
to  the  tunnel  level,  were  often  rendered  useless  from 
the  same  cause.  Hand  drills  were  used  at  first,  and 
the  rate  of  progress  was  slow';  it  would  have  required 
seven  or  eight  years  for  the  completion  of  the  main  tun- 
nel. Besides,  the  increase  of  heat  was  extraordinary, 
and  the  atmosphere  grew  so  bad  at  the  face  of  the  head- 
ing that  competent  authorities  have  doubted  whether 
the  tunnel  would  ever  have  been  completed  if  the  costly 
and  complicated  power  drills  just  beginning  to  come 


204:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

into  use  at  Mount  Cenis  and  elsewhere  had  not  been 
greatly  improved  by  American  inventors.  Burleigh 
and  Ingersoll  drills  soon  changed  the  aspect  of  affairs. 
An  interesting  comparison  made  at  this  time  between 
a  famous  Freiburg  tunnel,  the  Rothschonberger  Stol- 
len,  and  the  Sutro,  is  as  follows:  The  German  tunnel 
was  advancing  by  handwork  in  gneiss  rock  from  a  single 
heading  about  twenty-six  feet  a  month;  the  Nevada 
tunnel  was  advancing  in  andesite  from  a  single  heading 
one  hundred  and  five  feet  a  month.  When  power  drills 
were  introduced  the  advance  of  the  German  work  in- 
creased to  eighty-four  feet,  while  that  of  the  Nevada 
enterprise  rose  to  three  hundred  and  ten  feet.  The 
monthly  advance  of  the  Sutro  Tunnel  during  1875 
and  1876  maintained  an  average  of  three  hundred  and 
eight  feet,  an  unequalled  record  that  attracted  the  at- 
tention of  mining  engineers,  who  declared  that  Su- 
tro's  "  coyote  hole  "  was  the  greatest  undertaking  in 
America. 

Meanwhile  the  working  miners  of  the  Comstock 
were  fighting  their  old  enemies — water,  heat,  and  lack 
of  ventilation — and  hoping  for  the  completion  of  the 
tunnel.  Mining  superintendents,  who  still  claimed  that 
they  needed  no  help  from  Sutro,  were  forced  to  ac- 
knowledge that  the  water  plague  was  almost  more  than 
they  could  endure.  "  To  chronicle  such  a  contest," 
wrote  one  observer,  "is  to  write  down  an  unvaried 
record  of  flooded  shafts  and  levels,  of  temporary  drain- 
age and  new  inbursts  of  water,  or,  more  discouraging 
still,  of  broken  pumps  and  of  delusive  gains,  when 
the  battle  was  really  a  drawn  one  and  the  pumps  could 
only  hold  the  rising  water  in  check/'  The  cost  of 
pumping  on  the  Ophir  was  seventy-two  thousand  dol- 
lars a  year. 

So  matters  progressed  through  the  days  of  the 


THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL.  205 

Crown  Point  bonanza  and  the  early  days  of  the  greater 
marvels  of  Consolidated  Virginia  and  California — the 
mine  owners  steadily  declaring  that  they  would  never 
use  the  tunnel;  Sutro  and  his  men  hammering  on 
beneath  the  mountain.  Never  were  men  and  machinery 
handled  with  greater  skill;  picked  miners  in  short 
shifts  drove  the  advancing  drills  every  moment  of  day 
and  night  and  every  day  in  the  week;  skilled  timber- 
men  propped  the  tunnel;  young  athletes  threw  frag- 
ments of  hot  rock  into  iron  tram  cars;  long  trains 
of  mules  and  cars  went  to  and  fro  under  swinging  lan- 
terns. "  Faster!'  Faster! "  cried  Sutro  to  his  willing 
workers;  "  every  ton  of  ore  taken  from  the  bonanza 
loses  our  company  two  dollars!  " 

In  1873  the  temperature  at  the  face  of  the  tunnel 
was  only  72°  Fahr.  It  rose  to  83°  the  next  year,  to 
90°  in  1876,  to  96°  in  January,  1878,  and  to  109°  in 
April.  This  was  in  spite  of  the  most  powerful  blowers 
to  be  obtained  which  were  used  to  force  fresh  air  into 
the  tunnel.  The  heading  was  nearing  the  Comstock 
lode  and  its  solfataric  springs.  The  lamps  burned 
dimly;  workmen  at  the  front  fainted  at  their  posts. 
Another  danger  threatened  them.  Portions  of  the 
tunnel  crumbled  and  fell,  crushing  the  supports  in 
places,  and  only  constant  vigilance  and  labour  pre- 
vented a  catastrophe  which  might  have  crushed  the  air 
pipes  and  killed  every  man  at  the  heading.  The  work- 
men were  two  miles  from  the  nearest  ventilation  shaft 
when  this  terrific  heat  was  encountered,  and  it  grew 
worse  till  the  face  of  the  rock  showed  a  temperature 
of  114°.  After  May,  1878,  two  or  three  hours  of  work 
were  all  that  the  strongest  and  most  experienced 
miners  could  endure.  The  mules  often  refused  to 
enter  the  tunnel,  and  they  were  dragged  by  main 
strength  from  the  air-escapes.  It  was  evident  that  en- 


205  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

durance  was  being  strained  to  its  utmost  capacity.  Man 
after  man  dropped  down  on  the  rocky  floor  and  was  car- 
ried to  the  surface,  babbling  and  incoherent,  to  slowly 
recover  from  the  poisonous  air. 

At  last  the  miners  in  the  Savage  heard  the  blasts 
of  Sutro's  approaching  tunnel,  and  then  the  blows  of 
the  power  drills.  On  July  8,  1878,  Sutro  himself,  half 
naked,  like  one  of  his  miners,  toiled  at  the  front,  and 
toward  night,  when  the  final  blast  tore  a  jagged  hole 
through  the  wall  of  rock,  he  crawled  through  the  open- 
ing, "  overcome  with  excitement,"  as  one  of  the  news- 
papers said.  The  rush  of  hot  air  and  smoke  from  the 
tunnel  was  almost  unbearable  to  the  men  working  in 
the  cooler  Savage  drifts;  clouds  of  dust,  fine  rock, 
and  impurities,  gathered  in  the  tunnel  during  the 
nearly  nine  years  that  had  passed  since  its  commence- 
ment, shot  upward  through  the  shaft  of  the  Savage. 

The  immediate  goal  was  now  attained,  but  a  firm 
treaty  of  peace  between  the  contending  parties  was 
essential.  Most  of  the  mine  owners  still  said  that  they 
did  not  need  the  tunnel,  and  refused  to  stand  by  their 
contracts.  A  crisis  came  in  1879  when  the  Hale  and 
Norcross  pump  broke  and  water  began  to  flood  sev- 
eral mines.  The  superintendents  immediately  turned 
the  flow  from  the  remaining  pumps  into  the  tunnel, 
driving  out  the  workmen.  Sutro  began  to  put  in 
a  water-tight  bulkhead.  Either  open  war  or  a  law- 
suit carried  eventually  into  the  Supreme  Court  appeared 
the  only  alternatives. 

Fortunately  for  all  concerned,  wiser  counsels  pre- 
vailed, and  new  agreements,  which  bound  every  com- 
pany on  the  lode,  were  entered  into.  A  thousand  work- 
men began  to  cut  a  drain  channel  five  feet  wide  down 
the  middle  of  the  tunnel  floor,  and  by  July  it  was  in 
full  use.  The  temperature  of  the  water,  even  at  the 


THE  SUTRO  TUNNEL.  207 

mouth  of  the  tunnel,  was  never  below  100°  Fahr.,  and 
it  often  entered  the  tunnel  at  130°  and  even  160°.  The 
amount  of  flow  in  1880  was  not  less  than  1,300,000,000 
gallons,  and  as  other  mines  began  to  use  the  tunnel, 
the  total  annual  drainage  rose  at  times  to  nearly  or 
quite  two  billion  gallons.  When  work  is  again  at- 
tempted on  the  lowest  levels  of  the  Comstock,  for  years 
left  idle,  the  value  of  the  Sutro  Tunnel  will  be  even 
more  evident. 

At  the  time  of  the  completion  of  the  tunnel  the 
leading  mines;  were  using  more  powerful  pumping 
machinery  than  had  ever  been  applied  to  such  pur- 
poses. Perhaps  the  power  required  in  these  engines 
is  best  shown  by  the  size  of  the  wooden  pump-rods. 
Formerly  made  12  by  12  inches,  they  were  now  made 
14  by  16  inches,  of  sections  of  the  best  selected  Oregon 
pine  strapped  together  by  iron  plates,  yet  breakages 
were  frequent.  The  Belcher  pump-rod  broke  twelve 
times  in  eight  months.  It  is  estimated  that  the  cost 
of  handling  the  water  in  1880  was  three  million  dollars, 
even  with  the  aid  of  the  tunnel. 

When  his  victory  was  complete,  Sutro  retired  from 
the  control  of  the  tunnel,  selling  his  stock  at  a  high 
price  and  removing  to  San  Francisco,  and  became  one 
of  the  foremost  citizens  of  California.  He  knew 
Nevada  and  the  Comstock  better  than  most  men  of 
his  time,  for  he  had  been  a  part  of  the  whole  dramatic 
and  eventful  story  ever  since  1860.  After  twenty 
years  devoted  with  singular  courage  and  ability  to  a 
single  purpose,  that  purpose  had  rounded  into  well- 
wrought  achievement,  and  when  he  left  the  Comstock 
he  was  one  of  the  most  widely  known  men  in  America. 

Even  after  Sutro  left  the  Comstock  his  memorable 
"  coyote  hole  "  continued  to  share  the  fortunes,  good 
or  ill,  of  the  great  lode  it  drained.  According  to  the 


208  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

report  of  Mr.  Theodore  Sutro,  in  1887  the  main  tunnel 
had  cost  in  round  figures  $3,500,000,  and  the  laterals 
had. brought  this  sum  up  to  $5,000,000.  What  was 
considered  in  1879  one  of  the  larger  possibilities  of 
the  tunnel  has  never  been  developed.  Its  friends  con- 
stantly spoke  of  the  "facilities  which  the  tunnel  af- 
forded for  the  extracting  and  smelting  of  millions  of 
tons  of  low-grade  ore  "  which  lay  partly  exposed  to 
view  in  the  two  hundred  miles  of  shafts  and  galleries, 
and  partly  still  concealed  in  the  depths  of  the  Corn- 
stock  mines.  This  ore  was  passed  by  in  those  days, 
though  worth  ten  or  twelve  dollars  a  ton,  because  by 
the  methods  employed — the  mills,  the  railroad,  the 
hoisting  works — it  could  not  be  worked  at  a  profit. 
The  Sutro  Tunnel  Company  still  claims  that  by  water- 
power  mills  on  the  Carson  this  low-grade  ore  can  be 
worked  at  six  or  eight  dollars  a  ton,  thus  building  up 
a  new  industry  without  injuring  the  towns  on  the  Corn- 
stock.  Unfortunately,  the  plan  has  never  received  a 
full  and  fair  test.  Though  the  tunnel  company  is  said 
to  have  a  great  deal  of  low-grade  ore  in  its  own  terri- 
tory, lack  of  means  has  prevented  thorough  exploration 
of  its  resources,  as  well  as  the  building  of  reduction 
works.  The  tunnel,  like  the  great  lode,  has  long  been 
in  borrasca. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE. 

ALL  this  time,  while  describing  pioneer  life,  early 
settlement,  the  bonanzas,  the  Sutro  Tunnel,  and  many 
other  episodes  of  the  long  story  of  the  Comstock,  one 
has  necessarily  made  passing  allusions  to  the  build- 
ings and  machinery  on  the  surface  of  the  ground,  and 
to  the  still  more  interesting  details  of  the  inside 
workings  of  the  great  mines  on  the  lode.  So  much 
remains  to  be  told,  however,  respecting  the  appearance 
of  a  mine  of  the  first  rank,  "  on  deck  "  and  "  between 
decks,"  that  this  chapter  and  that  which  follows  are 
devoted  to  mines  and  mine  equipment  as  they  appear 
at  times  of  especial  activity  and  high  organization. 

When  a  visitor  goes  to  the  Comstock  he  sees  the 
ruins  of  many  old  mine  buildings  no  longer  in  use,  be- 
cause much  larger  and  more  complete  structures  over 
the  later  shafts  have  taken  their  place.  Of  the  more 
important  large  shafts  there  were  twenty-four  in  1880, 
several  of  them  huge  combination  shafts  used  by  more 
than  one  mine.  The  surface  of  the  lode  is  so  irregular 
that  the  altitudes  of  the  tops  of  the  shafts  vary  to  an 
extent  that  would  be  surprising  anywhere  except  in 
such  a  wild  mountain  region;  the  highest  shaft,  Bul- 
lion, begins  6,307  feet  above  the  sea,  and  the  lowest, 
the  old  Overman,  begins  5,731  feet  above  the  sea,  show- 
ing a  difference  of  536  feet  on  the  lode — enough  to 
make  quite  a  hill  on  a  Western  prairie.  The  surface 

209 


210  THE  STORY  OF  THE  .MINE. 

workings  of  the  Comstock  are  on  the  side  of  a  moun- 
tain furrowed  by  immense  ravines,  where  men  have, 
with  marvellous  persistence  and  energy,  hewn  out  or 
built  up,  on  terraces  supported  by  masonry,  sufficient 
room  for  mine  and  mill  buildings. 

Any  one  of  the  great  mines  when  in  active  opera- 
tion will  serve  as  a  type  of  the  general  plan  of  outside 
works,  the  result  of  thirty  years  of  experience  under 
Comstock  conditions.  Nothing  better  can  be  found 
in  the  way  of  concrete  illustration  than  the  works 
grouped  about  California  and  Consolidated  Virginia 
with  the  old  shafts,  the  new  combination 'shafts,  the 
mills,,  yards,  railroad  tracks,  trestle  works,  machinery, 
and  all  that  so  well  represents  the  modern  industry  of 
mining.  What  one  sees  at  the  main  works  is  a  very 
large  mass  of  high  buildings,  partly  on  the  level,  partly 
terraced  down  the  slope,  and  still  further  complicated 
by  wings,  annexes,  and  various  additions — all  thor- 
oughly well  made  and  painted  with  fire-proof  paint. 
Surrounding  the  whole  and  between  the  wings  and 
additions  are  piles  of  iron,  lumber,  cord  wood,  separate 
buildings,  and  vast  collections  of  supplies  of  every 
imaginable  sort. 

The  main  mass  of  buildings  resembles  nothing  so 
much  as  the  union  of  several  large  foundries  and  manu- 
factories. A  row  of  tall  smokestacks  steadied  by  steel 
cables  mark  the  location  of  the  engines,  the  blacksmith 
shops,  and  the  machine  shops.  As  one  goes  around 
the  yards  and  the  vast  structures  full  of  life  and  ac- 
tivity, the  passing  impression  varies;  here  are  flat  steel 
cables  woven  or  twisted,  copper  wire,  steel  bars,  and 
hardware  in  a  thousand  forms;  yonder  are  supplies 
enough,  one  would  think,  to  stock  a  street  full  of  whole- 
sale houses.  There  is  a  powder  house;  there  are 
offices  for  clerks  and  superintendents  and  a  build- 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE.  211 

ing  where  bullion  is  melted  and  assaying  is  done; 
there  are  also  rooms  for  the  surveyors,  draughtsmen, 
and  civil  engineers.  But  there  is  no  mine  in  sight  any- 
where. 

Some  idea  of  the  variety  of  articles  that  come  under 
the  general  head  of  supplies  and  are  gathered  together 
in  the  storehouses  here  may  be  obtained  from  a  few 
notes  of  purchases  made  by  a  single  mine  (California) 
in  1877,  when  over  $315,000  was  spent  for  miscellane- 
ous supplies  and  over  $547,000  for  fuel  and  for  the 
timbers  and  iron  used  in  the  new  shaft  then  being 
sunk.  The  "  regular  supplies "  stored  up  and  used 
above  ground  or  sent  down  into  the  mines  as  required 
included  the  following  large  items:  Timber,  over 
10,000,000  feet,  costing  about  $224,000;  ice,  nearly 
2,000,000  pounds,  costing  about  $22,000;  powder  to 
the  value  of  $17,000;  candles  worth  $16,000;  steel 
and  iron,  $5,000. 

If  we  take  the  total  expense  account  of  the  same 
mine  for  that  year  (1877),  we  obtain,  perhaps,  a  more 
striking  impression  of  the  scale  of  operations.  Sup- 
plies, as  we  have  seen,  were  used  to  the  value  of  about 
$315,000;  salaries  and  wages  came  to  about  $788,000; 
cost  of  reduction  was  $2,220,000;  of  hoisting,  $186,- 
000;  and  of  assaying,  $53,000.  Office  expenses,  team- 
ing, surveying,  taxes,  litigation,  and  miscellaneous 
items,  added  to  the  above,  bring  the  total  to  consider- 
ably more  than  $4,000,000.  In  such  a  mine  the  value 
of  the  outside  works  is  nearly  impossible  to  determine, 
for  it  is  constantly  changing.  If  there  is  no  mill  at- 
tached, half  a  million  dollars  would  be  a  low  estimate; 
complete  reduction  works  add  as  much  more  to  the 
total. 

Everywhere,  in  the  first  view  of  a  mine,  lumber, 
firewood,  and  machinery  are  the  most  striking  features. 
15 


212  THE  STOKY  OP  THE  MINE. 

The  depths  of  the  mine  in  the  last  thirty  years  have 
swallowed  up  fully  800,000,000  feet  of  timber- 
enough,  if  sawed  into  boards  and  scantlings,  to  con- 
struct forty  thousand  two-story  houses  of  six  rooms 
each.  These  would  provide  homes  for  two  hundred 
thousand  people.  If  the  consumption  of  lumber  had 
always  been  at  the  rate  of  such  bonanza  years  as  1875 
and  1876,  the  Comstock  lode  would  now  contain  near- 
ly three  times  as  much  lumber  as  this  buried  in  its 
shafts  and  drifts,  or  sufficient  for  the  homes  of  six  hun- 
dred thousand  people.  Hundreds  of  square  miles  of 
forest  have  been  cut  to  supply  this  inexorable  demand, 
and  every  foot  of  timber  used  has  been  hauled  to  Gold 
Hill  or  Virginia  City  and  piled  in  the  lumber  yards 
at  the  works. 

The  fuel  used  during  the  past  thirty  years  has 
aggregated  something  like  three  million  cords.  It  con- 
sists for  the  most  part  of  yellow  pine,  pitch  pine,  tama- 
rack, and  fir,  and  vast  tiers  of  it  lie  piled  up  at  all 
seasons.  In  1880  the  Sierra  Nevada  furnaces  used 
about  sixteen  thousand  cords  of  wood,  and  four  other 
mines  used  more  than  ten  thousand  cords  apiece,  Such 
a  mine  keeps  six  months'  supply  of  fuel  on  hand,  and 
even  a  smaller  mine  always  has  five  hundred  cords 
piled  in  the  yard. 

The  machinery  is  of  so  many  different  types  and  is 
constantly  undergoing  so  many  changes,  repairs,  and 
improvements,  that  the  foundries  and  machine  shops 
at  the  mouth  of  a  mine  often  seem  as  if  they  had  been 
transplanted  bodily  to  the  Comstock  from  some  large 
seaport.  The  immense  power  of  the  pumping  engines 
has  been  noticed,  but  the  total  horse  power  repre- 
sented by  all  the  engines  used  on  the  Comstock  affords 
a  still  better  measure  of  the  work  done.  The  mines 
in  1880  had  engines  of  a  combined  capacity  of  21,000 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE.  213 

horse  power.  Single  mines  have  had  2,000,  and  even 
3,000  horse  power  in  use  at  times. 

Outside  of  each  of  the  vast  structures  is  a  pile  of 
waste  rock,  the  dump  of  the  hidden  mine.  This  is 
perhaps  the  most  peculiar  feature  of  the  place,  and 
if  the  mine  that  supplies  it  is  of  the  first  rank,  the  size 
of  the  pile  is  mountainous.  A  part  of  the  waste  rock 
sometimes  goes  to  make  acres  of  level  ground  on  which 
to  place  the  mine  buildings  and  the  quartz  mill,  but 
there  is  so  much  left  to  be  poured  down  into  the  canons 
that  the  sum  total  is  really  one  of  the  most  impressive 
things  about  Virginia  City.  Cars  run  out  upon  a  track 
extending  from  the  building  far  over  the  middle  of 
the  dump,  and  are  emptied  automatically.  They  flash 
back  and  forth  all  day,  all  night,  every  day  in  the  week, 
and  the  waste  rock  and  debris  slide  slowly  to  the  bot- 
tom of  the  great  dusty  pyramid,  on  which  no  green  leaf 
ever  grows.  Such  a  pile,  much  smaller,  and  of  saw- 
dust instead  of  broken  rock,  the  lumber  mills  make 
along  the  Mendocino  coast;  but  always  these  latter 
smoke  and  blacken  with  an  ever-smouldering  fire  that 
burns  unquenched  for  decades,  and  always  the  wild 
flowers  of  the  forest  grow  in  the  very  edges  of  the 
fragrant  hills  of  sawdust.  In  strange  contrast,  the 
waste  rock  mountains  of  the  Comstock  are  without 
life,  colour,  sound,  or  change,  except  the  rattle  of  bits 
of  porphyry  and  the  sharp  sunlight  gleaming  on 
whitening  clays  and  splinters  of  stone  piled  on  barren 
hollows  above  the  sage  brush. 

The  central  building  over  the  mouth  of  the  large 
shaft  sunk  in  partnership  by  the  California  and 
Consolidated  Virginia  mines,  is  high,  steep-roofed 
and  large,  heavily  framed,  floored  solidly  and  well, 
open  to  the  roof  forty  and  fifty  feet  above,  and  in  every 
respect  suited  to  the  requirements.  Men — dozens  of 


214  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

them — quiet,  busy  men  dressed  in  woollen  shirts,  small 
felt  hats  or  caps,  and  blue  overalls,  are  directing  and 
operating  affairs.  Those  whose  duties  do  not  take 
them  down  into  the  mines  are  in  ordinary  citizen's 
clothes.  From  the  middle  of  the  floor,  through  a  row 
of  four  square  openings,  white  columns  of  steam  often 
rush  upward  in  huge  volumes  rolling  to  the  roof;  it 
is  the  breath  of  the  mines  below,  and  in  cold  weather 
the  warm  lower  levels  send  up  these  whirling  clouds. 
The  four  openings  are  the  tops  of  the  four  compart- 
ments of  the  shaft,  which  is  not  only  lined  on  every 
side  with  square  timbers,  but  is  still  further  divided 
by  perpendicular  partitions.  The  timbering  leaves 
these  lesser  parallel  shafts  about  five  feet  square,  and 
one  is  occupied  by  the  pipes  of  the  pumping  machinery, 
while  the  other  three  are  hoisting  compartments. 

This  is  the  top  of  the  mine;  through  these  small 
shafts  the  business  of  the  mine  is  carried  on.  The 
cages  that  move  up  and  down  may  be  compared  to  hotel 
elevators,  only  in  this  case  the  hotel  is  from  fifteen 
hundred  to  three  thousand  feet  high  and  pushed  down 
into  the  ground  so  that  everything  except  the  roof  is 
out  of  sight.  The  elevators  begin  at  the  roof  and  go 
down  to  the  basement,  past  floor  after  floor,  station 
after  station,  passageway  after  passageway,  until  the 
place  is  reached  where  another  cellar  is  being  hewed 
out. 

Some  sixty  feet  from  the  steaming  shaft  top  is  a 
large,  square  platform  raised  several  feet  above  the 
floor.  Here,  on  frames  of  massive  timbers  built  upon 
solid  rock  and  filled  in  with  cement,  are  the  hoisting 
engines;  here  the  engineers  sit  under  a  placard  some- 
thing like  this:  "No  person  allowed  on  the  platform, 
or  to  speak  to  the  engineers."  There  is  reason  enough 
for  the  warning,  for  the  lives  of  many  men  are  in  the 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE.  215 

hands  of  the  engineer  and  his  assistants.  These  mine 
engineers  are  strong,  modest,  manly — much  such  men 
as  are  in  similar  places  of  responsibility  in  the  engine 
rooms  of  a  Cunarder. 

Before  the  face  of  each  engineer  is  a  large  "  in- 
dicator" like  a  clock,  or  sometimes  in  the  form  of  a 
cylinder,  which  shows  exactly  where  the  cage  is;  be- 
side it  is  the  bell  by  which  he  communicates  with  the 
officers  and  workmen  on  the  different  levels  of  the 
mine.  He  stops  and  starts  the  cage,  "  slows  up,"  goes 
ahead  at  full  speed,  receives  word  about  the  contents 
of  the  cage,  and  many  other  important  matters.  Safety 
cages  are  now  used,  similar  in  construction  to  the  ele- 
vators in  large  buildings  but  much  heavier,  and  one 
source  of  accident  is  thus  removed.  The  mouth  of 
each  compartment  that  opens  through  the  floor  of 
the  main  building  is  closely  covered  with  an  iron  grat- 
ing which  each  cage  lifts  as  it  comes  up,  and  the  place 
is  sometimes  still  further  protected  by  a  railing,  so 
that  few  accidents  occur  at  the  top  of  a  mine  except 
through  careless  engineers. 

The  power  of  the  hoisting  engine  is  necessarily 
great.  At  the  Yellow  Jacket  the  two  hoisting  engines 
are  each  of  1,000  horse  power.  The  main  engine  at 
the  California  and  Consolidated  Virginia  shaft,  every- 
where known  as  the  "C.  &  C.,"  is  of  2,000  horse  power; 
it  lifts  a  cage  with  two  cars  of  rock  and  handles  a  passen- 
ger cage  at  the  same  time.  What  would  be  called  an 
average  cable  at  one  of  these  great  mines  is  made  of  steel 
wire,  woven  flat,  seven  inches  wide  and  five  eighths  of  an 
inch  thick;  the  pulleys  are  forty  or  fifty  feet  above 
the  shaft  mouth  on  a  cross-beam  supported  by  a  very 
large  and  massive  frame  which  is  built  around  the 
mouth  of  the  shaft  and  is  called  the  "  gallows-frame." 

There  are  two  kinds  of  cable  reels.    In  some  cases 


216  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

the  cable  is  coiled  directly  upon  a  short  reel;  in  other 
cases  a  drum  is  used.  The  latter  is  known  as  the  taper- 
ing hoisting  reel,  which  is  a  drum  of  very  heavy  wood 
turning  with  a  wrought-iron  shaft  sixteen  inches  in 
diameter.  On  this  base  beam  after  beam  has  been 
bolted  until  the  result  is  a  structure  fifteen  feet  long, 
thirteen  feet  in  diameter  at  one  end  and  twenty-two 
feet  at  the  other.  On  the  outside  of  the  truncated  cone 
thus  obtained  iron  plates  are  bolted,  and  a  deep  spiral 
groove  is  made  from  end  to  end  in  the  iron  to  guide 
and  steady  the  cable  as  it  winds  and  unwinds.  The 
wrought-iron  shaft  turns  in  a  framework  that  reaches 
quite  through  the  floor  of  the  building,  and  is  sunk 
deep  in  solid  rock  and  braced  against  every  strain. 

A  steel  cable  such  as  is  used  on  the  Comstock  weighs 
from  twenty-five  thousand  to  forty  thousand  pounds. 
In  the  case  of  those  that  taper  regularly  toward  the 
lower  end,  where  less  strength  is  needed,  the  reduced 
size  is  not  obtained  by  leaving  out  some  wires,  but  by 
gradually  tapering  each  wire  in  its  manufacture.  The 
flat  cables  are  much  preferred  for  heavier  work,  and 
were  first  made  by  Mr.  A.  S.  Hallidie,  of  San  Francisco, 
the  inventor  of  the  cable  system  of  street  cars  so  much 
in  use  in  that  city. 

The  engineers  of  the  Comstock  greatly  increased 
the  efficiency  of  their  steam  engines,  so  as  to  save  fuel. 
The  valve  gear  on  compound  engines  was  greatly 
changed.  The  hoisting  engines  were  made  to  act 
directly  upon  the  cables  by  keying  the  reel  to  the  main 
shaft,  increasing  the  possible  speed  with  which  the 
cables  could  be  hoisted  to  three  thousand  feet  per 
minute,  a  rate  ten  times  greater  than  the  utmost  speed 
attainable  before  1865. 

Danger  seems  inseparable  from  such  machinery. 
If  an  engineer  loses  his  presence  of  mind  for  a  second 


The  Mouth  of  a  Shaft. 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OP  A  MINE.  217 

while  guiding  the  swift-flying  cage,  the  men  may  be 
hurled  to  destruction.  At  the  Union  shaft,  in  1879, 
the  engineer,  a  careful  and  temperate  man,  was  hoist- 
ing a  cage  with  seventeen  men  from  the  bottom  of  the 
shaft;  when  they  were  near  the  top  he  started  to  shut 
off  steam,  but  turned  the  lever  the  wrong  way  and  the 
cage  shot  swiftly  into  sight.  Losing  his  head  entirely, 
the  poor  engineer  threw  the  valve  still  farther  over, 
and  the  cage,  leaping  upward,  gleaming  and  terrible, 
struck  the  timbers  of  the  gallows  frame  and  snapped 
the  seven-inch  cable,  which  "  parted  like  twine,"  mak- 
ing a  report  like  the  sound  of  a  cannon.  The  cable 
flew  backward  and  swung  on  one  side,  mowing  down 
timbers  and  machinery  as  far  as  it  could  reach.  It 
was  like  that  most  tremendous  accident  known  on  ship- 
board, the  breaking  loose  of  a  gun  amidships.  The 
great  building  shook  to  the  granite  foundations,  and 
men  cried  out  that  one  of  the  boilers  had  exploded. 
When  the  cage  struck,  every  man  except  two  who  clung 
to  the  shattered  frame,  and  one  who  seized  the  bell 
rope,  were  hurled  against  the  roof  and  fell  dead,  dying, 
or  crippled  on  the  floor. 

One  must  not  expect  to  see  a  close-walled  box  or 
steel  cage  for  an  elevator.  The  miners  have  only  a 
heavy  iron  cage,  entirely  open  on  two  'sides  and  nearly 
so  on  the  others.  Some  cages  are  single;  some  have 
two  floors  and  are  called  double-deckers.  The  old- 
style  three-  and  four-deckers  have  now  gone  out  of  use. 
Loaded  iron  cars  come  out  of  the  depths  and  are  at  once 
hooked  to  a  cable  that  pulls  them  from  the  cage  along 
a  track  on  the  floor  of  the  building,  or  they  are  rolled 
out  by  men  in  waiting.  If  the  contents  are  worthless, 
the  cars  are  quickly  switched  to  the  dumps  and  so  dis- 
appear; if  they  consist  of  ore  for  the  mill,  they  go  to 
one  of  the  most  important  and  complicated  of  all  the 


218  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

huge  structures  that  cluster  around  the  mouth  of  a 
Comstock  mine. 

The  Consolidated  Virginia  mill  as  built  in  bonanza 
days  has  sixty  stamps  of  eight  hundred  pounds  each, 
forty  pans,  four  agitators,  and  twenty  settlers,  and  is 
capable  of  reducing  two  hundred  and  fifty  tons  of  ore 
daily.  The  California  mill  has  eighty  stamps  of  nine 
hundred  and  eighty-four  pounds  each,  forty-six  pans, 
four  agitators,  and  twenty  settlers,  and  can  work  three 
hundred  and  eighty  tons  daily.  The  sixty-stamp  Con- 
solidated Virginia  mill  is  a  good  type  of  the  more  mod- 
ern improved  work  of  the  Comstock.  Let  us  follow 
the  course  of  an  ore  car  from  the  mouth  of  the  shaft 
and  see  what  happens  to  it. 

This  mill  is  built  near  the  rest  of  the  main  struc- 
ture on  a  lower  level.  A  car  track  nearly  three  hundred 
feet  long  leads  straight  from  the  mouth  of  the  shaft 
in  the  main  building  to  the  roof  of  the  quartz  mill. 
It  is  supported  forty-five  feet  in  the  air  on  trestle- 
work,  and  is  boarded  over  its  whole  length  with  rows 
of  windows  on  each  side,  so  that  it  "  resembles  nothing 
else  so  much  as  a  ropewalk."  The  ore  cars  are  made 
up  into  little  trains  and  hauled  to  the  top  of  the  mill 
by  mules.  One  of  the  famous  mules  in  bonanza  days 
was  known  far  and  wide  as  "Mary  Ann  Simpson." 
Tradition  had  it  that  she  knew  more  about  mill  work 
than  any  man  employed  in  the  mine,  and  she  had  cer- 
tainly hauled  millions  of  dollars  from  shaft  mouth  to 
mill.  In  some  mines  the  ore  is  carried  by  an  endless 
belt  in  buckets  on  a  cable,  or  the  cars  are  drawn  by  a 
cable  run  by  a  shaft  from  an  engine. 

When  dumped,  the  ore  falls  into  chutes  in  the  roof 
of  the  mill,  and  what  the  Californian  hydraulic  miners 
first  named  "  grizzlies  "  are  set  in  the  bottom  of  each 
chute.  A  grizzly  is  a  screen  of  parallel  iron  bars  three 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE.  219 

inches  apart,  in  most  cases,  set  sloping,  and  loose  at 
one  end,  so  that  while  the  finer  rock  goes  through, 
all  larger  fragments  roll  into  the  jaws  of  a  rock  breaker, 
whence,  after  having  been  sufficiently  crushed,  the 
material  goes  through  another  chute  into  the  main 
ore  bins  to  which  the  smaller  rocks  went  at  once.  In 
the  hydraulic  mines,  where  sets  of  grizzlies  are  some- 
times used  to  keep  boulders  out  of  the  flumes,  the 
mingled  roar  of  the  foaming  waters,  the  harsh  crash- 
ing of  rolling  rocks,  and  the  clang  of  quivering  bars 
of  massive  iron  can  be  heard  a  long  distance.  It  is  one 
of  the  noisiest  things  about  such  a  mine,  but  its  name 
does  not  seem  very  appropriately  taken  from  the  mon- 
arch of  the  Sierran  wilderness,  whose  tread,  though 
lumbering,  is  noiseless,  and  whose  loudest  utterance 
is  a  menacing  growl. 

Eeturning  to  our  typical  mill  on  the  Comstock, 
the  ore  bin  where  the  crushed  rock  falls  is  one  hundred 
and  ten  feet  long  and  the  contents  are  fed  by  chutes 
to  the  eight  batteries  of  ten  stamps  each.  The  mill 
building  stands  upon  ground  that  was  terraced  in  the 
most  careful  manner,  so  that  the  different  parts  of 
the  structure  stands  upon  different  levels,  as  is  required 
for  the  most  perfect  economy  of  labour  and  time.  After 
the  ore  is  once  delivered  at  the  top  of  the  building, 
gravity  is  made  to  do  as  much  work  as  possible. 

Beginning  with  the  power  required  to  run  a  mill 
of  this  type,  it  is  primarily  a  600-horse-power  compound 
condensing  engine.  There  are  two  cylinders,  one  of 
twenty-four  by  forty-eight  inches  and  the  other  forty- 
eight  by  forty-eight  inches;  steam  which  goes  into  the 
initial  or  smaller  cylinder,  cut  off  at  the  half  stroke, 
goes  into  the  expansion  cylinder,  where  it  fills  eight 
times  the  bulk  it  first  had.  Instead  of  going  into  the 
air,  it  then  exhausts  into  a  condenser  which  is  so 


220  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

arranged  as  to  counterbalance  the  atmospheric  pressure 
at  the  altitude  of  Virginia  City.  In  ways  like  this  the 
ponderous  machinery  of  the  Comstock  is  all  adapted 
by  a  host  of  details  to  suit  exactly  the  work  and  the 
locality.  The  main  shaft  of  the  engine  is  fourteen 
inches  in  diameter,  weighing  fifteen  thousand  pounds. 
The  fly  wheel,  eighteen  feet  across,  weighs  thirty-three 
thousand  pounds.  A  belt  from  the  fly  wheel,  which 
is  also  a  band  wheel,  drives  the  stamps  in  the  batteries. 
A  long  shaft  eleven  inches  in  diameter  goes  into  the 
amalgamating  room  and  drives  the  machinery  of  the 
pans  and  settlers.  The  engine  itself  weighs  fifty  tons 
and  rests  on  solid  masonry.  There  are  eight  boilers, 
each  sixteen  feet  long  and  fifty-four  inches  in  diameter, 
and  four  huge  smokestacks,  each  ninety  feet  high,  ex- 
tending forty  feet  above  the  roof. 

The  progress  of  the  ore  from  the  ore  bin,  under 
the  stamps,  through  the  amalgamating  room,  to  the 
retort  house,  and  finally  to  the  melting  room,  where 
the  refined  metal  is  cast  into  bars  of  bullion,  would 
require  many  chapters  full  of  technical  details  which 
properly  belong  to  metallurgical  treatises.  It  may  be 
noted  in  passing  that  there  is  a  great  deal  of  gold  in 
all  the  Comstock  ore,  but  the  quantity  varies  in  dif- 
ferent mines  and  at  different  levels.  In  the  whole  lode 
the  average  amount  of  gold  is  about  forty-two  per  cent, 
but  the  Gold  Hill  group  contains  forty-seven  per  cent 
of  gold  in  its  total  yield  to  date,  and  in  some  single 
mines  the  gold  has  been  nearly  sixty  per  cent. 

The  forty-six  mining  companies  of  the  Comstock 
in  1866  had  forty-four  engines,  of  a  total  horse  power 
of  1,500,  used  for  pumping  and  hoisting,  and  sixty- 
two  mills  run  by  steam  and  water  power,  with  1,271 
stamps  crushing  57,112  tons  of  ore  each  month.  Fif- 
teen years  later  (in  1881)  the  total  horse  power  of  all 


OUTSIDE  VIEW  OF  A  MINE.  221 

the  engines  on  the  lode  was  nearly  21,000,  and  it  has 
not  materially  increased  since  that  time.  When  all  the 
energies  of  the  men  of  the  Comstock  are  again  directed 
to  going  deeper  there  will  have  to  be  another  great 
advance  in  the  machinery  used,  and  the  inventive  skill 
of  the  world  will  be  taxed  to  its  utmost.  If  new  and 
greater  bonanzas  are  found,  the  mills  themselves  will 
be  reconstructed  upon  a  larger  scale. 

We  leave  the  deafening  clang  and  clatter  of  the 
mills  and  turn  back  to  the  main  building.  We  have 
seen  the  progress  of  the  ore  from  the  top  of  the  shaft 
to  the  retorts  and  the  assay  office.  It  is  time  to  descend 
into  the  mine  itself,  where  the  iron  ore  cars  are  being 
filled  and  pushed  along  underground  rails  to  the 
station.  It  is  time  to  study  life  in  the  chain  of  sub- 
terranean cities  of  the  Comstock. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND. 

AT  last  we  are  ready  to  study  at  its  best  the  great 
subterranean  city,  the  chain  of  works  for  whose  main- 
tenance and  extension,  mills,  machinery,  and  towns  on 
the  surface  were  created.  We  are  ready  to  go  down 
the  main  shaft,  stop  at  a  "station,"  explore  a  drift, 
see  the  miners  at  work,  and  hear  stories  of  peril  and 
adventure. 

The  visitor  retires  to  a  dressing  room,  takes  off  his 
or  her  ordinary  clothing,  puts  on  one  of  the  suits  kept 
there  for  the  purpose — flannel  pantaloons,  woollen 
shirt,  heavy  shoes,  and  felt  hat — is  placed  in  charge 
of  a  foreman,  and  they  enter  the  cage.  The  foreman 
waves  his  hand;  in  an  instant  we  are  dropping  noise- 
lessly into  the  darkness,  lit  only  by  the  flickering  rays, 
of  a  lantern  which  shows  timbers  seemingly  leaping 
upward. 

Pretty  soon  a  station  appears,  but  we  pass  without 
pausing.  There  seems  to  be  a  large  irregular  room 
opening  back  from  the  side  of  the  shaft.  Men  are 
busy  there,  moving  about  in  the  well-lighted  space, 
and  there  is  machinery  at  work.  If  we  went  slower 
we  should  see  a  drift  extending  from  the  station  and 
dividing  into  many  other  passages,  and  miners  and 
foreman  would  be  noticed  passing  to  and  fro  engaged 
in  various  occupations.  Every  hundred  feet  a  station 

222 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  223 

flashes  past,  and  the  immensity  of  the  work  begins 
to  grow  upon  the  traveller. 

Sometimes  the  man  in  charge  of  a  station  hails  us 
as  we  pass,  and  the  foreman  makes  a  reply  that  is 
Choctaw  to  the  uninitiated,  for  we  are  dropping  rapidly 
away  from  the  sound.  As  we  reach  a  depth  of  a  thou- 
sand feet  or  so  the  cable  sometimes  begins  to  "  spring  " 
with  a  peculiarly  disagreeable  bobbing  motion,  which 
gives  a  novice  a  new  sensation,  as  if  hung  in  an  abyss 
by  a  rubber  strap.  In  the  midst  of  this  we  come  to  a 
full  stop  at  the  fifteen-hundred-foot  station  and  step 
off  on  the  floor. 

A  station  is  the  office  for  the  work  done  on  that 
mining  level,  as  well  as  the  point  where  men  stop  and 
where  freight  is  shipped  or  received.  It  is  walled, 
roofed,  and  floored  with  huge  timbers  and  planks,  and 
is  a  large,  well-lighted  place  crowded  with  mining 
supplies,  barrels  of  ice  water,  candles,  fuse,  powder, 
tools,  etc.  If  it  were  not  for  a  car  track  which  crosses 
the  middle  of  the  floor,  coming  from  the  level  beyond 
and  connecting  by  switches  with  all  the  hoisting  com- 
partments of  the  shaft,  the  place  would  sometimes  seem 
a  combination  of  office  and  country  store.  The  car 
track  that  extends  through  the  main  drift  of  the  mine 
connects  by  turntables  with  the  side  drifts  and  cross- 
cuts. Laden  cars  arrive  regularly  from  the  "  stopes  " 
or  places  where  ore  is  being  taken  out,  and  are  sent  to 
the  surface  by  the  station  tender.  Empty  cars  as  they 
arrive  are  returned  to  some  place  where  they  are  needed 
by  the  car  men,  and  so  the  work  goes  on  steadily,  ex- 
cepting when  shifts  are  changed. 

The  drifts,  or  "galleries"  as  some  call  them,  are 
from  four  to  six  feet  wide  and  seven  to  eight  feet  high. 
The  miners  prefer  to  cut  them  outside  of  the  vein  as 
much  as  possible,  as  there  is  less  danger  of  caves.  The 


224  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

floor  of  a  drift  is  horizontal,  or  slightly  raised,  to  facili- 
tate the  delivery  of  ore.  The  main  north  and  south 
drift  is  the  Broadway  of  the  level,  and  sometimes  even 
contains  a  double  car  track.  The  cross-cuts  start  from 
the  main  drift  at  right  angles  with  the  vein,  so  as  to 
cut  into  the  ore  body  if  any  is  found.  Like  the  levels, 
they  are  about  a  hundred  feet  apart.  They  are  ex- 
tended entirely  across  the  lode  to  the  other  wall,  and 
are  connected  with  each  other  by  cross-drifts.  Every 
new  cross-cut  attracts  the  attention  of  all  who  are  in- 
terested in  the  mine.  If  one  cross-cut  is  in  pay  ore 
there  is  much  greater  excitement  when  the  next  one, 
a  hundred  feet  farther  on,  is  to  be  opened.  In  this 
way,  with  drifts,  cross-cuts,  and  cross-drifts,  the  skele- 
ton of  the  underground  plan  begins  to  be  apparent. 
Imagine  a  general  plan  something  like  this  on  each 
level,  and  we  only  have  to  describe  the  winzes  to  com- 
plete the  framework  of  the  passageways.  A  winze  is 
a  small  shaft  sunk  wherever  it  is  needed,  from  one 
level  to  another,  for  ventilation,  to  explore  new  ground, 
or  often,  when  sloping,  to  serve  as  a  chute  for  ore  and 
timbers.  An  "  upraise  "  is  the  beginning  of  a  winze 
started  on  a  level  and  carried  upward  toward  the  next 
higher  level.  If  it  is  finished  its  name  is  changed  to 
winze.  The  only  connection  between  one  level  and  an- 
other besides  the  main  shaft  is  by  means  of  these  winzes. 
Vertical  winzes  are  in  reality  shafts;  sloping  winzes 
are  inclines;  drifts,  cross-cuts,  and  cross-drifts  are 
really  tunnels. 

Th»  main  shaft  which  connects  all  these  under- 
ground workings  is  not  always  vertical,  neither  does 
it  always  remain  the  same  for  its  entire  length;  it  may 
be  an  "incline,"  as  the  Crown  Point  shaft,  which  is 
vertical  to  the  eleven-hundred-foot  level  and  then 
follows  the  lode,  which  dips  thirty-five  degrees  at  that 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  225 

point.  The  car  used  for  hoisting  through  an  incline 
is  a  " giraffe,"  absurdly  called  so  "because  the  hind 
wheels  are  very  large  and  the  front  ones  low,  so  as  to 
keep  the  car  level."  One  would  suppose  that  the  name 
kangaroo  would  be  more  appropriate.  It  carries  eight 
tons  of  ore  at  a  trip.  Sometimes  another  or  "back- 
action"  car  is  fastened  behind.  A  ride  on  a  giraffe 
is  very  exciting.  The  track  is  well  lighted  and  the  cars 
climb  it  with  the  speed  of  a  lightning  express.  The 
giraffes,  like  the  elevator  cages,  have  safety  grips.  At 
the  bottom  of  the  shaft  or  incline  is  the  "  sump,"  a  pit 
or  well  sunk  there  to  collect  the  water  from  the  mine. 
Here  are  the  suction  ends  of  the  pumps. 

To  have  a  main  shaft  presupposes  that  there  are 
some  air  shafts  for  ventilation;  but  there  are  few  on 
the  Comstock,  ventilation  being  secured  as  far  as  pos- 
sible by  connection  with  the  main  shafts  of  other  mines. 
The  miners  agree  that  the  direction  of  a  draught  in  a 
mine  remains  permanent  for  years,  but  if  a  fire  in  a 
mine  changes  the  draught,  it  never  changes  back.  A 
"  down-cast "  has  thus  been  changed  in  an  hour  to 
an  "  up-cast."  The  general  tendency  of  air  currents 
in  the  Comstock  is  in  the  same  direction  as  the  slope 
of  the  ore  chimneys — that  is,  southward.  Each  new 
connection  makes  changes  in  the  air  currents  in  all 
the  mines. 

There  is  machinery  in  the  mines,  and  often  a  great 
deal  of  it.  Steam  makes  too  much  heat,  but  com- 
pressed air,  hydraulic  power,  and  electricity  are  now 
used  with  entire  success.  Small  engines  run  the 
"  blowers  "  to  force  fresh  air  through  pipes  to  every 
part  of  the  mine,  but  particularly  to  the  heads  of  the 
news  cuts,  drifts,  and  upraises;  others  hoist  and  lower 
rock  and  other  materials  in  the  various  winzes,  and  still 
others  drive  the  drills.  All  this  makes  a  network  of 


226  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

pipes,  mostly  for  compressed  air,  extending  through- 
out the  mine. 

The  admirable  system  which  prevails  is  nowhere 
more  manifest  than  in  the  way  men  are  handled.  They 
form  in  line  in  the  hoisting  works  and  march  into  the 
cages.  They  leave  the  mines  in  the  same  way.  Three 
shifts  of  eight  hours  each  make  the  day  of  twenty- 
four  hours.  "  Morning  shift  "  is  from  7  A.  M.  to  3  P.  M.; 
"afternoon  shift "  from  3  to  11  P.M.,  and  "night 
shift "  till  7  again.  Each  level  of  the  mine  has  there- 
fore its  three  shift  hosses.  The  clerk  who  acts  as  time- 
keeper has  an  office  in  the  hoisting  works  and  registers 
every  man's  ingoing  and  outcoming  with  the  regularity 
of  a  machine.  The  shift  bosses  report  men  missing 
or  sick,  also  accidents,  or  anything  else  of  importance. 
They  tally  loads  of  ore  and  waste  rock,  filling  up  a 
printed  blank.  The  superintendent  thus  knows  how 
much  work  each  shift  has  accomplished.  Each  level 
has  a  foreman.  The  mine  has  also  a  general  under- 
ground foreman,  and  an  assistant  to  take  his  place  at 
night.  As  regards  the  workmen,  there  is  complete 
classification.  The  timber  men  attend  to  the  supports 
of  the  various  workings;  the  miners,  drill  men,  and 
drifters  hew  and  cut  passages  and  extract  the  ore;  the 
pump  men  and  engineers  see  to  their  respective  duties. 
Watchmen  make  regular  rounds,  messengers  carry 
orders,  take  the  men  water  or  tools,  and  gather  up  the 
dulled  picks  and  crowbars  to  send  them  to  the  forges. 

Lamps,  candles,  and  electric  lights  gleam  along  the 
rocky  aisles  of  the  mines,  except  in  long  unused  por- 
tions. Since  one  mine  is  connected  with  another  on 
the  various  levels,  the  boundary  lines  being  accurately 
marked  on  the  walls  of  the  main  drifts,  the  longer 
streets  of  the  underground  city  extend  for  three  and 
four  miles,  and  in  active  times  men  are  met  at  almost 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  227 

every  corner  and  turn,  singly  or  in  groups.  It  is  a  busy, 
populous  city,  and  its  inhabitants  are  a  superb  race  of 
men,  white-skinned  twilight  dwellers,  naked  except 
for  shoes,  overalls,  and  small  felt  caps.  They  go  about 
quietly  with  hardly  a  word  to  each  other.  It  is  a  land 
of  silence  as  well  as  of  candlelight.  One  begins  to 
understand  why  miners  have  always  made  such  uncon- 
querable soldiers  at  times  of  national  need;  these  men 
are  soldiers  already  in  their  power  to  yield  prompt 
obedience  and  in  their  capacity  to  move  together  in 
solid  phalanxes. 

On  the  Comstock  the  arch  enemy  is  heat.  "  View 
their  work! "  says  Mr.  Lord  in  his  history  of  the  lode. 
"  They  enter  narrow  galleries  where  the  air  is  scarce 
respirable.  By  the  dim  light  of  their  lanterns  a  dingy 
rock  surface  braced  by  rotting  props  is  visible.  The 
stenches  of  decaying  vegetable  matter,  hot,  foul  water, 
and  human  excretions  intensify  the  effects  of  the  heat." 
The  men  can  not  wear  woollen  garments,  they  perspire 
so  freely.  In  the  most  heated  parts  of  the  mine  they 
work  ten  or  fifteen  minutes,  then  run  to  thrust  their 
heads  under  cooler  water  from  the  pipes,  and  to  breathe 
deeply  the  fresh  air  forced  out  of  the  blowing  tubes. 
They  soon  become  so  exhausted  that  the  shift  boss 
orders  them  back  to  lighter  work  in  less  torrid  drifts. 
Miles  of  passageways  have  been  cut  in  air  so  unendura- 
ble that  candles  burned  blue  and  went  out,  and  men 
falling  down  were  dragged  back  by  their  comrades. 

About  1868  it  began  to  be  noticed  that  the  points 
of  greatest  heat  in  the  lode  moved  considerably  from 
year  to  year,  as  if  the  hot-water  streams  sometimes 
filled  one  part  of  the  lode  and  sometimes  another. 
Crown  Point,  on  the  f  ourteen-hundred-f  oot  level,  struck 
a  stream  so  hot  that  eggs  were  readily  cooked  in  it,  but 
a  year  later  the  heat  at  this  place  was  much  lessened. 
16 


228  THE  STOEY  OF  THE  MINE. 

Bullion  on  the  seventeen-hundred-foot  level  registered 
140°  Fahr.  About  this  time  an  enormous  vein  of  hot 
water  was  tapped  at  various  points  along  the  lode.  It 
has  been  estimated  that  the  water  pumped  out  of  the 
Comstock  at  this  period  and  the  air  in  circulation 
through  the  mines  were  together  removing  annually 
an  amount  of  caloric  that  was  the  full  equivalent  of 
that  produced  by  fifty-six  thousand  tons  of  the  best 
anthracite  coal,  burned  in  the  most  economical  man- 
ner. Notwithstanding  this  constant  extraction  of  heat 
from  the  lode,  the  temperature  continued  to  increase, 
though  with  many  fluctuations,  as  greater  depths  were 
attained  in  the  various  mines. 

Specialists  have  had  a  pretty  quarrel  over  the  cause 
of  the  heat  in  the  lode.  Prof.  Church  says:  "  Chemical 
combinations  between  the  water  and  the  lode  rocks5' 
— technically,  kaolinization  of  the  lode  feldspar. 
Others  say  that  the  water  in  the  lode  rises  from  "  where 
the  eruptive  rocks  retain  much  of  their  primal  heat." 
The  highest  recorded  water  temperature  here  is  175° 
Fahr.,  and  large  areas  of  rock  remain  at  from  130° 
to  150°.  When  the  miners  were  working  on  the  lowest 
levels  of  the  deepest  shafts,  three  thousand  feet  and 
more  from  the  surface,  there  was  every  sign  of  enter- 
ing a  new  hot  belt  probably  far  greater  than  any  heat 
previously  known  in  the  entire  history  of  mining.  By 
the  compressed-air  pipes  the  five  or  six  men  at  a  head- 
ing receive  fully  seven  hundred  cubic  inches  of  air 
per  minute.  It  reaches  the  place  at  a  temperature 
of  about  90°,  seldom  less.  On  some  levels  each  miner 
drinks  three  or  four  gallons  of  ice  water  in  his  eight- 
hour  shift.  The  hotter  parts  of  Consolidated  Virginia 
have  required  ninety-five  pounds  of  ice  daily  to  every 
miner  at  work.  "  Even  with  this  help/'  said  the  Terri- 
torial Enterprise,  "four  picked  men  in  some  stopes 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  229 

have  found  themselves  unable  to  do  the  work  of  one 
man  in  a  cool  drift."  An  incline  in  Savage  became 
so  tropical  as  it  advanced  that  the  men  who  were  ar- 
ranging the  pump  rod  at  a  new  station  staggered  out 
half  dead  with  cholera-like  cramps  caused  by  the  blind- 
ing heat  and  foul  air.  Men  lost  their  wits,  raved,  sang, 
talked  like  lunatics,  and  had  to  be  taken  to  a  less  heated 
part  of  the  level,  where  they  were  rubbed  and  kneaded 
from  head  to  foot,  especially  on  the  stomach.  Some- 
times it  was  necessary  to  carry  them  to  the  surface 
and  obtain  prompt  medical  attendance.  Under  these 
searching  strains,  which  tried  the  best  constitutions 
until  the  weakest  place  gave  way,  men  often  perished 
in  the  drifts.  Besides  those  who  yielded  to  heart  fail- 
ure, apoplexy,  and  suffocation,  some  were  tortured  to 
death  by  falling  into  pools  of  boiling  water. 

Besides  this  intense  heat  of  the  lower  levels,  the 
hot  water  met  with  in  running  drifts  and  crosscuts 
is  sometimes  so  poisonous  with  the  minerals  it  contains 
in  solution  that  when  a  vein  is  tapped  it  blinds  every 
miner  in  that  part  of  the  workings.  Their  faces  swell 
and  their  eyes  remain  closed  until  they  have  been  some 
time  in  the  open  air  and  under  medical  treatment. 
Then,  too,  the  old  shafts  in  the  upper  levels,  long  ago 
abandoned  and  marked  "  dangerous "  on  the  mine 
maps,  have  been  left  to  darkness  and  decay.  Acres  of 
underground  passages  and  ore  chambers  here  are 
ghastly,  crumbling  ruins,  trembling  under  the  step  of 
every  explorer.  Timbers  are  twisted  and  crushed  to 
half  their  original  length  or  pressed  together  by  the 
weight  of  the  mountains  overhead  until  they  seem 
like  flattened,  broken,  entangled  straws  in  the  "  lake  " 
of  a  cider  press.  Occasionally  some  one  creeps  along 
the  remaining  crevices  into  the  shapeless  and  fast-clos- 
ing chambers  of  ancient  bonanzas.  The  foul  and 


230  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

musty  odours  of  a  charnel  house  fill  the  hot,  dripping, 
desolate  darkness;  moist  and  slimy  fungi  of  gigantic 
size  and  strange  shapes  grow  out  of  the  walls  and  tim- 
bers; fire  damp  fills  many  of  the  drifts,  and  dangerous 
explosions  occur;  phosphorescent  lights  glow  at  times 
in  these  tangled  tropical  forests  overthrown  and  crushed 
together,  and  in  winter  nights  abandoned  shafts  are 
sometimes  illuminated  with  dazzling  blue  flames  that 
might  serve  for  the  witch  scene  of  an  opera. 

The  ordinary  accidents  which  are  everywhere  in- 
separable from  mining  life  occur  on  the  Comstock  in 
every  possible  form,  only  on  a  larger  scale  than  usual. 
The  character  of  the  vein  matter  would  be  termed 
"  extra  hazardous  "  by  every  mining  man.  Three  hun- 
dred fatal  accidents  and  six  hundred  "  severe  injuries  " 
were  reported  in  the  files  of  the  Virginia  City  news- 
papers between  1863  and  1880.  It  is  safe  to  estimate 
that  from  the  time  the  mines  were  opened  in  1859  to 
the  summer  of  1893 — thirty-four  years — there  have 
been  six  hundred  fatal  and  twelve  hundred  severe  acci- 
dents on  the  Comstock.  The  years  for  which  the  sta- 
tistics are  most  complete  show  inexplicable  variation. 
Accidents  seem  to  go  by  groups  and  seasons,  and  there 
are  many  superstitions  respecting  the  subject  among 
miners  themselves. 

Although  not  the  greatest  source  of  mining  disas- 
ter, according  to  statistics,  a  fire  is  by  far  the  most 
dreaded  of  all  accidents.  In  some  mines  there  is  but 
a  single  shaft  up  which  to  escape,  and  smoke  and  ex- 
plosive gases  add  to  the  dangers.  There  may  be  eight 
or  nine  hundred  men  compelled  to  take  their  turns 
to  ascend  the  shaft  in  the  cages;  the  gas  explosions 
put  out  most  of  the  lights,  and  men  rushing  to  escape 
fall  headlong  into  winzes  and  chutes.  Other  accidents 
only  endanger  a  few  men  nearest  the  scene,  but  when 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.    '.  231 

the  timbers  take  fire  every  person  in  the  mine  is  in 
imminent  danger.  The  slightest  smell  of  anything 
burning  is  instantly  noticed  and  examined  into.  A 
man  could  cause  an  excitement  throughout  half  a  dozen 
levels  of  a  mine  by  lighting  a  newspaper  in  a  candle, 
for  the  smoke  would  soon  penetrate  the  drifts,  and 
anxious  miners  would  begin  to  tumble  out  of  every 
nook  and  cranny. 

The  amount  of  lumber  packed  into  a  mine  is  so 
great  and  the  draught  in  case  of  fire  is  so  violent  that 
hurricanes  of  flames  and  smoke  leap  through  the  nar- 
row channels  of  rock  and  beat  in  resistless  waves  to 
the  remotest  opening.  It  can  hardly  be  possible  to 
overestimate  the  inflammability  of  a  well-timbered 
Comstock  mine.  Where  bonanzas  once  existed  are 
oval  chambers,  one  or  two  thousand  feet  high,  packed 
full  of  cribs  of  timbers,  with  hundreds  of  floors  of  two- 
and  three-inch  planks  on  which  the  miners  stood  to 
work  away  at  the  roof  as  they  rose  on  frame  after  frame 
from  the  bottom  to  the  top  of  the  bonanza.  There 
are  stairs,  timber-lined  chutes,  winzes,  drifts,  and  cross- 
cuts, and  everywhere,  besides  the  heavy  timbers,  there 
are  miles  of  "lagging"  behind  the  frames.  Things 
could  not  be  better  arranged  for  a  conflagration. 

Some  glimpses  of  the  famous  fire  in  Yellow  Jacket 
will  serve  to  illustrate  the  subject.  Here  the  fire  began 
about  seven  o'clock  one  April  morning  in  1869  on  the 
eight-hundred-foot  level,  two  hundred  feet  from  the 
main  shaft.  The  morning  shift  was  in  the  mine  when 
the  alarm  was  given,  and  Gold  Hill  and  Virginia  City 
were  aroused.  At  the  shafts  of  Kentuck  and  Crown 
Point,  the  adjacent  mines,  as  well  as  in  the  Yellow 
Jacket  shaft,  blinding  volumes  of  smoke  prevented 
descent.  As  when  a  ship  is  in  the  breakers  grinding 
to  pieces  against  sharp  rocks,  those  on  board  are  some- 


232  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

times  as  completely  beyond  mortal  help  as  if  they  were 
upon  another  planet,  so  in  this  case  the  firemen  and 
miners  found  it  impossible  to  descend,  not  only  on 
account  of  the  black,  thick  smoke,  but  because  of  the 
highly  mineralized  and  deadly  gases  which  made  men 
faint  and  dizzy  yards  from  the  mouths  of  the  shafts. 

A  safety  lantern  was  put  on  a  cage  and  sent  down 
with  a  message  of  cheer  written  in  large  letters  on  a 
piece  of  pasteboard:  "  We  shall  get  you  out  soon.  It 
is  death  to  attempt  to  come  up  from  where  you  are. 
Write  a  word  to  us."  The  cage  descended  slowly,  stop- 
ping long  at  level  after  level  to  the  lowest  point  at 
which  any  of  the  men  were;  it  came  back  without  any 
reply.  A  draught  suddenly  drew  the  smoke  out  of 
the  Kentuck  shaft,  and  men  were  able  to  descend  in  the 
cages;  they  found  the  bodies  of  two  miners;  the  gather- 
ing of  Death's  harvest  had  begun.  Crown  Point  could 
not  be  entered,  but  the  smoke  and  gas  drew  away  from 
Yellow  Jacket  after  an  hour  or  two,  and  men  began 
to  bring  up  the  dead  in  that  shaft,  carrying  them 
through  a  circle  of  rope  extended  about  the  hoisting 
works  and  laying  them  on  the  ground. 

Firemen  took  hose,  and  carried  it  down  the  shaft  to 
the  eight-hundred-foot  level;  miners  and  timber  men 
went  with  them,  putting  out  flames,  propping  up  fall- 
ing walls  and  sides  of  drifts  half  filled  in  places  with 
debris  from  the  roofs.  Such  a  battle  in  the  recesses 
of  a  mine  equals,  and  indeed  surpasses,  in  elements 
of  danger  and  heroism  the  fiercest  fire  battle  that  men 
ever  waged  on  the  surface  of  the  earth.  They  played 
streams  of  water  all  day  upon  red-hot  rock  and  into 
boiling  lakes,  and  the  water  ran  at  scalding  heat  from 
the  giant  pumps.  Sudden  caves  drove  poisonous  gases 
upon  them;  they  were  paralyzed  by  fumes  of  sulphur, 
antimony,  and  other  minerals,  and  were  sent  up  the 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  233 

still  smoking  shaft,  whose  heavy  timbers  fortunately 
had  not  been  destroyed. 

After  thirty  hours  of  continuous  labour  the  firemen 
and  miners  recovered  twenty-three  bodies.  The  fire 
broke  out  again  and  again,  with  new  jets  of  deadly 
gas;  it  became  evident  that  no  life  remained  in  the 
ruins,  and  at  last,  after  several  days  and  nights  of  un- 
availing struggle  in  the  three  mines,  the  mouths  of  the 
shafts  were  hermetically  sealed  and  steam  was  forced 
into  them  with  all  the  force  of  the  giant  engines.  Two 
days  later  the  shafts  were  opened  and  more  bodies 
found,  but  the  fire  broke  out,  and  the  mines  were  again 
sealed.  This  alternation  continued  several  times,  for 
the  whole  mining  community  was  determined  to  recover 
every  body;  but  the  firemen  were  brought  up  insensible, 
even  seventy-five  days  after  the  first  outbreak  of  the 
fire.  The  miners  at  last  walled  up  the  smouldering 
fire  on  the  eight-hundred-foot  levels  of  Kentuck  and 
Crown  Point,  where  it  continued  to  burn  for  a  year  or 
more.  It  is  a  well-authenticated  fact  that  three  years 
afterward  there  was  still  red-hot  rock  in  some  of  these 
drifts. 

The  scenes  that  occurred  in  the  mine  when  the  fire 
broke  out  were  graphically  told  in  the  Territorial  En- 
terprise and  other  newspapers,  whose  reporters  inter- 
viewed every  man  who  escaped  in  the  first  cage  load 
before  smoke  and  gas  had  filled  the  shaft.  The  story 
reads  like  a  leaf  from  the  destruction  of  Pompeii — 
darkness,  smoke,  ashes,  rains  of  fire,  fatal  vapours 
asphyxiating  the  panic-stricken  people  of  the  submon- 
tanic  city.  The  Crown  Point  miners  crowded  in  the 
cage,  where  they  hung  to  every  bar  in  such  wild  con- 
fusion that  the  station  keeper  thought  many  of  them 
would  be  torn  to  pieces,  and  so  held  the  cage  until  it 
had  only  time  to  escape,  remaining  behind  himself 


234:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

and  losing  his  life.  One  miner,  hastening  toward  the 
shaft  in  the  total  darkness,  all  lights  having  been  put 
out  hy  gas  explosions,  dropped  on  his  knees  and  began 
to  crawl  forward  till  he  was  at  the  edge  of  the  shaft. 
Several  other  miners  ran  up  from  behind,  and  he  heard 
them  fall  headlong  into  the  deeps. 

Outside,  the  scenes  that  occurred  as  bodies  were 
brought  out  of  the  volcano  mouth,  and,  most  of  all, 
when  the  order  to  seal  the  shafts  was  given,  were  such 
as  abide  in  one's  memory  for  a  lifetime.  Wives,  chil- 
dren, fathers,  mothers,  friends  of  the  doomed  men 
were  all  there,  adding  their  separate  passions  to  the 
awful  grief  and  despair.  Some  wept,  some  wrung 
their  hands  and  cried  aloud,  some  appeared  as  if  sud- 
denly insane  or  stupefied  and  overwhelmed  by  the 
calamity.  Now  and  then  a  woman  fainted  and  was 
carried  home  by  her  friends,  and  ever  the  crowd  grew 
as  the  more  remote  cottages  of  the  miners  poured  forth 
wild  women  hurrying  from  washtubs  and  housework 
to  where  the  black  smoke  rolled  forth,  a  sign  to  the 
cities  of  the  lode  that  precious  human  lives  were  being 
lost  in  that  vast  daedalian  labyrinth  a  thousand  feet 
below.  As  each  body  was  carried  out,  a  wailing  cry 
rang  through  the  crowd  like  the  winter  wind  in  Sierra 
pines:  "  Who  is  it?  "  "  Who  is  it  this  time?  "  Then 
the  wives  of  the  missing  miners  came  forward  to  look, 
and  some  one  shrieked  recognition,  and  those  that  car- 
ried the  dead  sobbed  as  they  turned  back  for  another. 

Later  there  were  other  fires.  Explosions  shook  the 
solid  earth  and  hurled  sheets  of  flame  two  thousand 
feet  along  the  drifts  from  mine  to  mine.  Scorched 
bodies  were  found  beside  the  fire  track,  but  miners  in 
the  cross-cuts  escaped.  Again,  some  months  after- 
ward, the  Belcher  air  shaft  caught  fire.  The  men  were 
got  out  of  the  mine,  but  gas  explosions  that  were  heard 


The  Bottom  of  a  Shaft, 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  235 

a  mile  off  and  spurts  of  flame  five  hundred  feet  high 
warned  the  superintendent  that  the  drifts  must  he 
closed  or  the  whole  mine  would  soon  be  a  mass  of 
flames.  He  called  for  eighteen  unmarried  volunteers 
for  a  desperate  undertaking,  and  had  great  difficulty 
in  choosing  among  those  that  came  forward.  They 
were  hastily  hulkheading  the  main  drift  near  the  burn- 
ing shaft  when  a  large  cave  in  the  latter  changed  the 
direction  of  the  draught,  and  instantly  a  breaker  of 
white  flame  rolled  forward  through  the  drift.  Nine 
of  the  eighteen  men  "were  hoisted  out  scarred  and 
crisp,  their  clothes  burned  from  their  bodies."  A  sec- 
ond gang  of  volunteers  took  the  place  of  the  first  and 
completed  the  bulkhead. 

A  remarkable  struggle  for  life  occurred  in  the  Suc- 
cor mine,  a  little  off  the  Comstock,  on  the  Silver  City 
grade.  Some  miners  who  wished  to  "  thaw  out "  their 
frozen  giant  powder  put  a  dozen  cartridges  on  the  en- 
gine boilers  and  went  away.  Pretty  soon  the  cartridges 
began  to  burn,  throwing  out  jets  of  flame  that  rose  to 
the  woodwork,  and  so  the  hoisting  works  blazed  up 
in  a  moment.  The  mine  was  a  small  one,  and  little 
work  was  being  done  at  the  time;  two  men  were  down 
in  the  shaft,  five  hundred  feet  below,  and  the  hoisting 
tub  was  there  also.  The  car  man  and  engineer  shouted 
to  the  men  and  shook  the  cable,  but  failed  to  make 
them  understand  that  they  were  in  great  peril.  Then 
the  fire  drove  everybody  out  of  the  building.  It  was 
soon  in  flames  and  fell  in,  and  the  timbers  of  the  shaft 
itself  began  to  ignite.  Of  course  every  one  knew  that 
there  was  no  hope  after  that  for  the  men  below,  who 
could  not  escape  suffocation.  But  two  days  later,  when 
the  fire  was  put  out  and  a  gang  of  miners  went  down, 
they  found  the  bodies  of  the  two  men  "  at  the  pump 
station,"  a  recess  in  the  side  of  the  shaft.  They  had 


236  THE  STORY  O?  THE  MINE. 

actually  climbed  two  hundred  and  sixty-five  feet  by 
clinging  like  snails  to  the  corner  timbers  and  slight 
crevices.  Foot  by  foot  their  marvellous  journey  was 
traced,  and  it  still  remains  an  unequalled  feat  in  the 
annals  of  mining.  They  were  in  perfect  safety  in  the 
sheltered  alcove  until  the  poisonous  gas  from  the  burn- 
ing pine  rose  to  that  point  and  destroyed  them.  A 
polite  coroner's  jury  a  few  days  later  said:  "  We  must 
strongly  deprecate  the  custom  prevalent  in  many  mines 
of  warming  giant  powder  on  the  boilers  about  the 
works." 

The  spirit  in  which  the  miners  meet  peril  and  death 
is  almost  uniformly  the  cool,  careless  fatalism  of  many 
a  war  veteran.  Some  of  their  grim  jests  still  ring  like 
the  sayings  of  old  Norse  sea  kings.  A  premature  blast 
in  one  of  the  mines  once  drove  a  foot-long  splinter 
through  the  hand  of  a  timber  man,  through  the  lag- 
ging he  was  working  on,  and  into  the  soft  rock.  "  We 
shan't  need  a  spragg  at  this  end,  Bill! "  was  his  cool 
remark.  A  "spragg,"  be  it  understood,  is  a  square 
stick  of  wood  six  or  eight  inches  long.  One  end  is 
put  against  the  posts  of  the  timbering;  the  other  end, 
slightly  sharpened,  is  against  the  heavy  planks,  called 
lagging.  The  pressure  of  the  walls  upon  the  planks 
gradually  forces  them  out,  and  the  spraggs  go  steadily 
through  into  the  rock  behind.  When  the  planks  reach 
the  post  the  men  in  charge  take  picks,  relieve  the  pres- 
sure, and  put  in  new  spraggs.  This  system  keeps  the 
main  timbers  from  being  broken. 

A  still  more  famous  case  of  nerve  was  furnished 
by  a  brawny  young  Cornishman  who  fell  into  a  main 
shaft.  Twenty  feet  down  he  came  to  the  pump  station 
out  of  which  the  old-style  pump  "bob-nose"  pro- 
jected a  little,  and  by  agility,  strength,  and  good  for- 
tune he  was  enabled  to  seize  it  with  both  hands,  and  so 


THE  CITY  UNDERGROUND.  237 

hung  over  the  shaft,  swinging  from  the  slippery  iron. 
He  made  no  outcry,  knowing  that  he  had  been  seen  to 
fall  and  that  men  would  look  down  the  shaft.  When 
a  bucket  was  lowered  and  he  was  brought  up  he  cast 
a  careless  glance  over  his  shoulder  as  he  walked  off  and 
said:  "  If  ee  ha'nt  caught  hold  of  the  bob  ee'd  ha*  been 
scattered  all  abroad  by  now! " 

We  have  thus  studied  the  toils  and  adventures  of 
the  citizens  of  the  real  Comstock,  the  men  of  shafts, 
drifts,  winzes,  and  ore  chambers.  This  strange  hidden 
realm  begins  to  take  shape  in  one's  mind.  It  is  truly 
a  city,  but  it  is  not  like  the  cities  of  the  surface,  nor 
can  it  be  even  measurably  described  by  the  terms  and 
phrases  that  apply  to  such  cities.  If  the  California 
and  Consolidated  Virginia  mines  could  be  taken  out 
of  the  great  lode  and  set  on  a  plain,  they  would  cover  a 
parallelogram  thirteen  hundred  and  ten  feet  one  way 
and  about  three  thousand  feet  the  other.  The  height 
to  which  they  would  rise  would  be  over  three  thousand 
feet.  Through  the  mass  around  and  within  it  one 
would  see  so  many  galleries  and  pathways  that  to  re- 
move the  whole  body  of  material  piecemeal  would  seem 
easier  than  to  construct  a  tithe  of  them.  Everywhere 
there  are  angles,  curves,  and  irregularities,  as  veins 
of  ore  have  been  followed.  Everywhere  the  mass  of 
soft,  mineralized  matter  mingled  with  hardest  rock  is 
bored,  patched  together,  upheld  by  braces,  and  kept 
from  instant  collapse.  These  mines,  moreover,  are 
only  two  out  of  many.  The  whole  lode,  if  plucked 
forth  by  the  roots,  would  present  similar  characteris- 
tics, and,  more  than  this,  it  would  lean  like  the  Pisan 
tower,  and  the  sides  would  run  in  and  out  like  a  top- 
pling, wave-worn  cliff  full  of  coves  and  promontories. 

But  the  Comstock  seems  to  me  a  more  impressive 
fact  just  as  it  stands,  walled  in  by  mountains  and  rooted 


238  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

so  deep  that  men  may  toil  there  through  centuries 
to  come  without  reaching  the  bottom  of  its  "fissure 
vein."  After  meditating  upon  the  paths,  lanes,  alleys, 
roads,  crossroads,  and  highways  of  the  great  group  of 
mines,  rising  by  stairs  on  stairs,  from  level  to  level, 
one  is  ready  to  grasp  the  completed  conception  of  the 
labyrinthian  wilderness,  where,  in  the  midst  of  aban- 
doned acres  of  caves,  pitfalls,  and  jungles  of  fungi- 
overgrown  timbers,  lie  masses  of  ore  and  yet-undiscov- 
ered bonanzas. 

Imagine,  then,  a  city  built  by  fallen  angels  or  by 
the  jinn  and  genii  of  Arabian  legend.  They  have  riven 
the  Himalayas,  the  roof-ridge  of  the  world,  and  in  the 
vast  cleft  they  have  builded  with  stones  and  metals, 
cell  by  cell,  as  the  honeybee  builds.  Millions  of  years 
the  dwellers  have  toiled  until  the  cleft,  from  palm- 
land  levels  to  where  deodars  grow  in  the  edges  of  snow 
drifts,  is  full  and  running  over.  At  last  the  kingdom 
of  the  genii  is  overthrown  by  some  superhuman  hero. 
Wrathfully,  then,  the  defeated  ones  rain  fire  and  molten 
rock  down  the  Himalayan  cleft,  pile  mountains  over- 
head, and  pass,  black-winged,  out  of  sight  forever! 
Still,  traditions  of  the  wondrous  city  live  on  in  singers' 
tales,  mingled  with  stories  of  heroes  and  the  gods  in 
their  high  places;  still,  men's  imaginations  cling  to 
the  legend.  Then,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  treasure- 
seekers  come,  tracking  up  a  barren  canon  the  faint 
spatter  of  molten  drops  blown  from  towers  of  gold 
in  the  wondrous  city's  conflagration.  They  tunnel 
into  the  cleft,  they  sink  shafts  into  measureless  depths, 
still  molten  with  rains  of  fire,  until  they  find  and  empty 
the  palace  rooms  of  the  princes  and  monarchs  of  a  race 
that  existed  before  the  generations  of  men. 


CHAPTER    XX. 

THE   MINING   COMMUNITY. 

GREATER  than  the  city  are  the  dwellers  therein; 
finer  than  all  incidents  and  illustrations  of  the  magni- 
tude and  material  wealth  of  the  Comstock,  are  lessons 
of  human  faith,  courage,  and  ability  to  conquer  every 
obstacle,  that  are  taught  by  the  story  of  the  mines. 
For  a  period  of  time  as  long  as  an  average  life  the 
famous  group  has  been  training  men  to  be  miners;  has 
been  creating  specialized  types  of  character  in  the 
midst  of  a  peculiarly  courageous  and  intelligent  com- 
munity. 

Along  the  Comstock,  year  after  year,  the  bonds  of 
common  interest  and  sectional  pride  drew  men  closer 
together  in  spite  of  strenuous  rivalries.  Periods  of 
bonanza  replaced  pioneer  cabins  with  edifices  of  brick 
and  stone,  terraced  upon  the  hillsides.  Periods  of 
borrasca  welded  social  ties  among  those  whose  fortunes 
were  inseparable  from  that  of  the  Comstock,  even  as  a 
trip  hammer  unites  steel  blooms  into  armour-plates  for 
girding  iron  leviathans  of  war.  Men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren learned  to  love  the  keen  excitements,  the  splendid 
physical  activities,  the  perpetual  outpourings  of  energy, 
the  virile,  superb,  passionate  life  of  the  mining  camp. 

Everywhere,  almost  unheeded,  in  the  bustling,  rest- 
less community,  were  the  hidden  elements  of  literature, 
but,  strangely  enough,  no  world-famous  tale  of  the 
Comstock  has  yet  sprung  from  the  fertile  soil.  Here 


240  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

and  there  a  few  Calif ornians  have  attempted  to  picture 
the  changing  life  of  early  Nevada  before  it  passed  away, 
and  brilliant  local  writers  have  photographed  episodes 
and  single  characters.  But  no  great  novelist  seems 
to  have  recognised  the  preciousness  of  the  fast-passing 
opportunity.  Some  day  the  story-teller  will  come  who 
can  add  another  masterpiece  to  literature,  as  one  long 
dead  but  not  forgotten  once  went  to  a  crumbling  adobe 
house  and  a  poor,  despised  race,  and  there  wrote 
Eamona. 

Said  a  man  who  knew  and  loved  the  Comstocker: 
"  The  person  who  only  judges  from  the  exterior  has 
no  business  in  the  camp.  He  will  be  picked  up  a  little 
too  often  for  pleasure  if  not  set  down  a  little  too  heavily 
for  comfort.  A  man  can  have  any  game  he  wants, 
whether  played  with  a  pack  of  cards  or  with  pistols, 
whether  straight  from  the  shoulder,  or  in  kindness 
from  the  heart."  Dr.  Gaily  can  also  be  called  as  wit- 
ness to  the  characteristics  of  the  men  of  these  and  other 
mountain  camps:  "  They  are  not  good  people  in  the 
Sunday-school  view,  but  there  is  a  spirit  of  charity  and 
a  Saxon  sense  of  fair  play  about  them  which  is  a  sub- 
stitute. A  deliberate  insult  to  a  woman  or  a  child  is 
a  bid  for  instant  death,  and  the  general  verdict  is, 
'  Served  him  right! '  But  no  man  here  is  any  other 
able-bodied  person's  guardian.  Whoever  wishes  to  go 
to  the  dogs,  goes  to  the  dogs.  There  is  no  restraint, 
or,  as  they  express  it, '  There  is  nobody  holding  you.' ' 

Mining  camps,  large  and  small,  openly  wear  their 
worst  side  out.  Whatever  vice  exists  is  open  to  the  sun. 
With  much  that  is  evil,  there  is  also  much  that  is  noble, 
and  even  heroic.  Meanness  is  very  scarce,  and  shams 
of  any  sort  are  instantly  punctured.  "What  do  you 
know?"  is  a  common  morning  salutation,  and  "What 
can  you  do?"  expresses  the  habitual  attitude  of  the 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  241 

camp  toward  every  stranger.  Everywhere  among  this 
great  and  peculiar  race  of  men  one  finds  a  graphic, 
broadly  humorous,  or  quaintly  burlesque  use  of  words; 
never  in  any  part  of  the  world  has  language  been  more 
perfectly  fitted  to  daily  needs.  Here  are  grotesque 
idioms  and  ancient  yet  living  dialects;  here,  also,  is 
Shakespeare's  English,  new-minted  by  the  men  of  the 
camp  into  homely  phrases  that  have  become  American. 
The  frontiersman  is  here,  but  the  backwoodsman  has 
been  eliminated.  One  notices  with  surprise  that  these 
men,  and  in  fact  all  others  in  the  camp,  seem  endowed 
with  an  undismayed  spirit  of  humorous  buoyancy, 
curiously  common  here  to  all  temperaments,  climatic, 
consonant  with  the  clearness,  dryness,  and  purity  of 
the  atmosphere,  and  yet  so  individualized  as  to  be  full 
of  a  rare  and  inexpressible  charm. 

As  for  the  workers  in  and  about  the  mines,  the 
minutely  classified  body  of  men  that  form  the  real 
nucleus  of  the  camp  and  give  it  these  distinctive  fea- 
tures, no  other  group  of  men  in  America  are  more  com- 
pactly organized,  none  show  a  keener  intelligence,  and 
none  are  deeper-chested,  stronger-limbed  mountain- 
eers. Their  abounding  vitality  and  cool,  steady  cour- 
age (in  the  mining-camp  term,  "  sand  ")  have  received 
abundant  illustration  in  the  preceding  pages,  but  noth- 
ing has  been  said  of  their  love  and  tenderness  for  each 
other  in  times  of  need.  Men  become  "pards,"  and 
each  one  lives  for  the  other,  willing  to  die  for  him  if 
there  is  a  chance,  and  that  may  come  at  any  moment. 
They  take  care  of  the  sick  with  the  gentleness  and  pa- 
tience of  trained  hospital  nurses.  It  is  a  heroic  fellow- 
ship at  its  best — the  social  order  of  this  masterful, 
masculine  community. 

The  underground  miner  as  he  goes  about  the 
street  is  a  well-dressed,  clean  person,  who  takes  a 


242  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

daily  bath  and  changes  his  clothing  twice  a  day 
— once  when  his  shift  goes  on,  and  once  when  it 
comes  off.  He  is  calmly  proud  of  his  occupation, 
in  the  purely  professional  spirit,  but  personally  he  is 
as  modest  a  man  as  one  could  wish  to  see;  it  is  not  at 
all  his  fault  that  he  is  in  his  way  an  aristocrat  among 
working  men.  His  life  has  made  him  a  sane,  thought- 
ful, responsible  person  as  far  as  mining  goes,  no  matter 
how  lawless  of  social  conventions  he  may  choose  to  be 
in  other  directions.  He  knows  himself  responsible  for 
the  lives  of  his  fellow- workmen;  his  own  life  hangs 
upon  the  honesty  of  another's  work,  and  that  other's 
life  hangs  upon  the  honesty  of  his  own  work.  A  single 
careless  prop,  a  defective  bolt  or  timber,  any  neglect 
or  lack  of  thoroughness,  any  laziness  or  ignorance,  is 
sure  to  bring  calamity,  and  may  bring  death.  There- 
fore this  responsible  professional  personage  is  as  stern 
as  Ehadamanthus  in  his  judgments  upon  all  that  per- 
tains to  his  business. 

No  incompetent  foreman  can  govern  such  men. 
In  a  great  fire  at  Crown  Point,  Senator  John  P.  Jones, 
then  superintendent,  found  it  necessary  to  cut  a  pipe 
on  the  seven-hundred-foot  level.  It  was  midnight,  and 
almost  continuously  for  five  days  and  nights  he  had 
been  foremost  in  leading  the  dripping  firemen  and  half - 
naked  miners  through  smoking,  flaming,  steaming 
drifts.  Jones  and  a  young  man  went  alone  into  the 
level  to  drive  a  plate  of  steel  through  the  pipe.  They 
worked  for  fifteen  minutes  in  an  atmosphere  so  deadly 
that  the  lights  almost  failed  them,  and  the  miner  could 
hardly  hold  the  plate.  The  lights  went  out  as  the  last 
stroke  fell,  and  Jones  carried  his  fainting,  half-delirious 
assistant  to  the  main  shaft  and  held  him  during  the 
ascent.  When  the  hoisting  room  was  reached  he 
dropped  his  burden  on  the  floor  and  staggered  blindly 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  243 

to  a  bunk.  Such  were  the  leaders  of  the  Comstock 
miners. 

One  can  hardly  understand  the  curious  ebb  and 
flow  of  mining  life  in  its  mingling  of  admirable  reserve 
with  dangerous  turbulence  without  long  meditation 
upon  that  troglodytic  existence  often  so  singularly 
barren  of  colour  and  variety,  and  yet  so  inexorable  in 
its  demands  upon  heart,  hand,  and  brain.  Men  might 
toil  with  dull  persistency  for  months  in  a  dark,  dripping 
vault,  picking  down  a  wall  and  wheeling  out  rock;  one 
twist  of  the  pick  might  fill  the  drift  with  a  foaming, 
resistless  river  of  water.  The  divine  elements  of  mys- 
tery and  passion  were  forever  hovering  near  them. 
Thus  miners  become,  in  the  course  of  years  of  toil, 
magnificent  examples  of  the  power  of  such  environ- 
ment to  stimulate  the  emotions  and  intellects  of  labour- 
ers, and  to  produce  a  people  with  vast  capacities  for 
love  and  hate,  for  sarcasm  and  laughter,  for  terrible 
wrath  and  for  sublime  self-sacrifice. 

From  the  most  ancient  times,  says  Gamboa,  the 
toils  of  the  mine  have  been  a  punishment  for  slaves, 
a  torment  for  martyrs,  a  means  of  revenge  for  tyrants. 
The  Belgians  purposely  called  the  mining  shaft  "  la 
fosse"  the  grave,  and  the  Cornish  pits  were  named 
"coffins."  This  dreary  and  exhausting  employment 
makes  men  long  for  amusement;  they  become  reckless 
and  yield  to  the  strong  and  coarse  temptations  of  min- 
ing towns.  The  staples  of  leisure-hour  existence  mean 
to  thousands  deep  drinking  and  high  gaming.  The 
vast  fortunes  made  and  lost  in  mining  stocks,  and  the 
fluctuations  in  real  values  of  the  mines  themselves, 
insensibly  warp  the  judgment  and  make  the  whole 
community  restless,  eager,  ever  anxious  for  sudden 
gains.  A  leading  Comstock  mine  owner  once  said 
that  he  "  did  not  mind  what  wages  he  paid  his  men," 
17 


244  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

for  "  all  the  surplus  "  came  back  to  him  in  his  stock 
deals. 

The  simple,  childlike  men  of  the  mining  camps 
were  quickly  stirred  for  good  or  evil.  During  the  war 
the  "  sanitary  flour  sack  "  of  Nevada  became  historic. 
It  began  its  career  in  an  outside  camp  where  an  elec- 
tion bet  was  made  that  the  loser  should  carry  a  fifty- 
pound  sack  of  flour  through  the  town  and  donate  it 
to  the  Sanitary  Commission.  Gridley,  to  whom  this 
fate  befel,  put  the  sack  up  at  auction,  and  $4,539  in 
gold  was  realized.  He  then  took  it  and  started,  in  May, 
1864,  on  a  tour  of  the  Pacific  coast.  When  the  famous 
sack  reached  the  Comstock,  Mark  Twain  and  Tom 
Fitch  made  speeches,  and  the  towns  on  the  lode  took 
a  holiday.  Gridley,  covered  with  flags,  the  sack  of  flour 
on  his  shoulder,  walked  through  the  streets,  escorted 
by  brass  bands,  military  companies,  carriages,  horse- 
men, and  the  multitude.  Silver  City  invested  $1,800. 
Gold  Hill  poured  out  $6,587,  and  when  Gridley  reached 
Virginia  City  and  mounted  the  platform  with  his  won- 
drous sack  the  miners  were  determined  to  "  play  the 
game  for  all  it  was  worth."  The  Chollar  miners, 
through  their  spokesman,  offered  $500;  Potosi  miners 
raised  them,  and  so  it  rose  by  hundred-dollar  leaps, 
as  group  after  group  entered  the  contest,  till  the  Gould 
and  Curry  miners,  to  use  their  own  phrase,  "  lifted  the 
rest  of  the  boys  out  of  their  boots  "  by  paying  $3,500 
in  cash.  Coin  rattled  like  hail  on  the  platform  until 
nearly  $14,000  was  raised.  Men  climbed  over  chairs 
and  emptied  their  pockets  before  Gridley.  Accord- 
ing to  the  Territorial  Enterprise,  a  "  small  brown  bug  " 
crawling  on  a  man's  arm  was  caught,  put  up  at  auc- 
tion, and  sold  for  ten  dollars  for  the  Sanitary  Fund, 
as  a  sort  of  side-show,  while  Gridley  was  still  auction- 
ing off  his  flour.  A  person  who  jeered  irreverently 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  245 

at  the  bug,  and  also  suggested  that  the  money  "  had 
better  be  given  straight/'  was  immediately  thrashed 
by  an  irate  miner. 

Nothing  in  the  long  story  of  the  Comstock  sur- 
passed the  outburst  of  delight  that  took  place  upon 
the  surrender  of  Lee.  The  people  "went  wild  in  a 
frenzy  of  emotion."  Said  one  of  the  newspapers:  "  No 
such  drinking  was  ever  before  seen  anywhere.  In  three 
hours  the  majority  of  the  men  of  the  city  were  crazy 
drunk,  including  many  who  were  never  before  under 
the  influence  of  liquor,  and  were  to  be  seen  lying  in 
heaps.  Business  was  entirely  suspended,  and  the 
printers,  editors,  and  reporters  being  all  drunk,  no 
papers  were  issued."  Mark  Twain  himself  could  not 
invent  a  more  unique,  plausible,  and  all-sufficient  edi- 
torial excuse  for  not  coming  out  on  time.  Eabelais 
in  all  his  madcap  revels  never  depicted  such  "  high 
old  times"  as  Virginia  City  saw  that  day.  Men  left 
the  saloons  and  walked  the  streets,  drinking  the  healths 
of  the  war  heroes  and  of  the  war  President  until  the 
last  reveller  sank  into  maudlin  sleep.  A  few  days  later 
came  the  news  of  the  assassination  of  Lincoln.  Then 
the  men  of  the  Comstock  wept  like  children  and  draped 
their  houses  and  stores  in  black.  Seizing  a  man  who 
muttered  approval  of  the  deed,  they  gave  him  thirty 
lashes  on  the  bare  back,  and  were  with  great  difficulty 
restrained  from  hanging  him. 

Newspapers  were  very  numerous  in  the  Nevada 
mining  camps.  Scores  of  brilliant  and  audacious 
writers  entered  the  new  fields  with  able  publications 
whose  scattered  files  will  always  remain  the  best  con- 
temporary record,  and  often  the  only  one,  of  many  a 
forgotten  district  long  since  abandoned  to  primeval 
silence.  The  support  that  these  journals  received  was 
surprisingly  liberal,  and  while  the  camps  were  pros- 


246  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

perous  they  were  bonanzas  to  their  fortunate  owners. 
Before  the  Big  Bonanza  was  exhausted  more  than  a 
hundred  different  newspapers  had  been  started  in  the 
scattered  towns  of  Nevada,  whose  population  was  only 
sixty  thousand  people.  "  Along  the  shore  where  these 
dismantled  journals  were  driven  by  adverse  winds," 
writes  one  of  the  pioneer  editors,  "  are  buried  many 
absurd,  strange,  wonderful,  and  often  tragic  experi- 
ences." A  few,  a  very  few,  of  the  old-time  editors 
survive,  in  a  world  as  remote  from  their  thoughts  and 
training  as  the  thickly  settled,  railroad-gridironed 
Sacramento  Valley  is  remote  from  one  of  the  white- 
haired  trappers  of  Siskiyou.  Some  of  them,  winning 
a  wider  fame,  left  the  Comstock,  or  Reese  River,  or 
White  Pine,  decades  ago;  others,  tired  of  the  "  festive 
pistol's  popping"  and  "a  man  for  breakfast  every 
morning,"  have  learned  to  plant  orchards  and  vine- 
yards in  the  California  valleys,  and  so  lengthened  their 
days  after  the  long  service  of  pioneer  journalism. 

Hard  and  ceaseless  that  service  was.  Into  every 
new  camp  some  wandering  editor-printer  went  with 
his  press,  types,  and  outfit,  was  noisily  welcomed  by 
the  miners,  turned  his  mule  loose  on  the  hillside,  and 
began  to  pencil  his  announcement  for  the  first  issue 
of  the  Prospect,  Miner,  Argent,  Silver  State,  True  Fis- 
sure, Reveille,  Messenger,  or  whatever  he  chose  to  call 
the  new  venture.  The  Silver  Bend  Reporter,  started 
in  such  a  manner,  in  1867,  at  a  frontier  mining  village 
in  a  rocky  canon  of  Nye  County,  announced  its  advent 
in  language  that  was  there  considered  a  model  of  the 
dignified  style  of  salutatory:  "  Here,  in  this  bright  off- 
shoot of  civilization,  surrounded  by  a  vast  ocean  of 
wilderness,  shall  be  a  newspaper!  In  young,  vigorous, 
and  beautiful  Belmont  we  have  settled."  The  Terri- 
torial Enterprise,  the  pioneer  newspaper  of  the  region, 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  247 

had  five  men  on  the  editorial  staff  and  twenty-two 
compositors.  Five  hundred  dollars  a  month  was  the 
salary  of  the  managing  editor.  Mark  Twain  and  Dan 
De  Quille  were  reporters.  About  this  time  Tom  Fitch, 
of  the  Union,  challenged  Joe  Goodman,  of  the  Enter- 
prise, to  a  duel  in  Six-Mile  Canon.  Mark  Twain  re- 
corded his  disappointment  in  the  next  issue:  "  Young 
Wilson  and  ourselves  at  once  mounted  a  couple  of  fast 
horses  and  followed  in  their  wake  at  the  rate  of  a  mile 
a  minute,  since  when,  being  neither  iron-clad  nor  half- 
soled,  we  enjoy  more  real  comfort  in  standing  up  than 
in  sitting  down.  But  we  lost  our  bloody  item,  for 
Marshall  Perry  arrived  early  with  a  detachment  of 
constables,  and  Deputy-Sheriff  Blodgett  came  with  a 
lot  of  blarsted  sub-sheriffs,  and  these  miserable,  med- 
dling whelps  arrested  the  whole  party  and  marched 
them  back  to  town/' 

Columns  of  this  sort  of  thing  could  be  culled  from 
the  pioneer  newspapers  of  the  Comstock  in  the  days 
of  their  glory,  when  their  laughing  and  fighting 
writers  were  the  most  virile,  rollicking,  merciless,  ten- 
der-hearted quill-drivers  in  America.  K.  M.  Daggett, 
Henry  Mighels,  of  Carson,  Myron  Angel,  J.  T.  Good- 
man, and  D.  E.  McCarthy  were  among  the  most  famous 
Nevada  editors  of  the  period,  and  nearly  all  of  them 
belong  to  the  Comstock  group  of  newspapers,  where 
they  first  exhibited  their  high  literary  abilities.  A 
little  later,  while  these  veterans  were  still  in  harness 
and  a  younger  group  of  writers — such  as  Sam  Davis 
and  Arthur  McEwen — were  becoming  known,  the 
press  of  Nevada  contained  more  real  Pacific-coast  lit- 
erature and  gave  its  writers  more  freedom  of  expres- 
sion than  did  the  newspapers  of  California  and  Oregon 
put  together. 

A  pioneer  newspaper  office  early  in  the  '60's  is  de- 


248  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

scribed  as  a  rickety  one-story  frame  building  about 
twenty  feet  wide.  It  contained  an  old-style  Washing- 
ton press,  cases,  desks,  and  editor's  table.  A  small 
lean-to  addition  was  the  kitchen  and  dining  room,  and 
sleeping-bunks  like  those  in  a  ship's  forecastle  occu- 
pied one  side.  On  cold  winter  nights  the  stove  was  made 
red-hot,  and  the  printers  moved  as  close  to  it  as  possible 
and  "  lashed  old  sacks  around  their  feet  with  bale  rope  " 
to  keep  themselves  warm.  When  it  rained  the  roof 
leaked,  and  the  dripping  water  was  led  over  the  cases 
by  strings,  so  many  of  which  filled  the  upper  part  of  the 
roof  that  it  looked  as  if  hung  with  "  webs  of  Brobding- 
nagian  spiders/'  Every  one,  down  to  the  printer's 
devil,  had  shares  in  some  favourite  mine,  and  boxes 
full  of  specimens  lay  around  in  the  corners.  When  a 
prospector  from  the  desert  entered  the  office,  editors 
and  printers  dropped  their  work  and  gathered  around 
him  to  listen  and  ask  questions.  Many  of  these  pioneer 
newspaper  men  had  done  more  or  less  prospecting  them- 
selves. 

Stories  about  Mark  Twain,  whose  brother  was  Ter- 
ritorial Secretary,  are  countless  in  Nevada.  He  came 
to  Virginia  City  from  another  camp,  where  he  had 
been  writing  letters  signed  "Josh."  When  the  first 
steam  press  in  Nevada  started  in  the  Enterprise  office, 
the  "  general  mix-up  of  new  press,  newspaper,  and  bot- 
tles of  wine  "  caused  Twain  to  take  among  other  things 
what  he  averred  was  "  a  severe  cold  on  his  mind."  He 
staid  at  home  and  one  of  his  chums  took  his  place  at 
the  local  desk.  The  next  morning  the  paper  contained 
an  article  purporting  to  come  from  Mark  Twain,  in 
which  he  was  made  to  make  an  abject  and  circumstan- 
tial apology  to  a  large  number  of  Virginia  City  news- 
paper men  and  other  citizens  whom  he  had  at  vari- 
ous times  criticised.  This  document  instantly  cured 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY*  249 

the  "cold  on  the  mind/'  and  Twain,  resuming  his 
editorial  chair,  described  its  late  incumbent  as  "  a  rep- 
tile endowed  with  no  more  intellect,  no  more  cultiva- 
tion, no  more  Christian  principle  than  animates  and 
adorns  the  sportive  Jackass  rabbit  of  the  Sierras!  " 

But  it  was  as  legislative  reporter  that  Clemens  be- 
came a  shining  light  of  the  times.  Besides  his  sober, 
everyday  Senate  and  Assembly  items,  he  concocted  a 
Third  House  report  which  pelted  the  Legislature  with 
incessant  sarcasm.  Member  after  member  was  made  to 
air  his  views  in  a  grandiose  burlesque  of  his  favourite 
expressions.  After  an  excellent  parody  upon  Senator 
Stewart's  famous  speech  against  taxing  the  mines,  the 
president  of  this  mythical  Third  House  responded: 

"  Take  your  seat,  Bill  Stewart!  I  am  not  going  to 
sit  here  and  listen  to  that  same  old  song  over  and  over 
again.  I  have  been  reporting  and  reporting  that  in- 
fernal speech  for  the  last  thirty  days,  and  I  want  you 
to  understand  that  you  can't  play  it  off  any  longer. 
When  I  want  it  I  will  repeat  it  myself — I  know  it  by 
heart,  anyhow.  You  and  your  bed-rock  tunnels  and 
your  blighted  miners'  blasted  hopes  have  got  to  be 
a  sort  of  nightmare  to  me,  and  I  won't  put  up  with  it 
any  longer." 

Thus  the  humorist  dealt  undismayed  with  each 
individual  idiosyncrasy  of  the  legislators,  and  made 
them  ridiculous  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
Nevada.  When  poor  Larrowe,  of  Eeese  Eiver,  returned 
to  his  constituency  he  was  everywhere  greeted  with  ad- 
miring quotations  from  the  Proceedings  of  the  Third 
House,  such  as  "Nine  sceptred  and  anointed  quartz 
mills,  sir,  in  Lander  County  already! "  and  the  terse 
presidential  comment:  "Plant  yourself,  sir!  plant 
yourself!  I  don't  want  any  more  yowling." 

Leaving  the  newspapers,  let  us  again  turn  to  the 


250  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

mining  class.  The  statistics  for  1880  are  typical  of  the 
working  force  at  a  time  when  it  was  larger  and  better 
organized  than  at  present.  At  that  time  there  were 
2,770  miners  employed,  of  which  770  were  Americans, 
816  were  Irish,  640  were  English,  191  were  Canadians, 
83  were  Scotch,  and  the  rest  were  "  from  everywhere." 
Welsh,  Swiss,  Swedes,  Slavonians,  Danes,  Belgians, 
French,  Australians,  Manxmen,  Norwegians,  Portu- 
guese, and  Russians  were  represented.  There  was  one 
Finlander  and  one  Laplander.  Six  more  men  were 
married  than,  unmarried.  The  average  age  was  a  frac- 
tion over  thirty-six;  the  average  height  was  five  feet 
nine  and  one  fifth  inches;  the  average  weight  was  very 
close  to  one  hundred  and  sixty-six  pounds.  Classified, 
lastly,  according  to  employment,  in  thirty-nine  distinct 
occupations  in  and  around  the  mines,  the  Americans 
furnished  a  majority  of  the  foremen,  bosses,  engineers, 
firemen,  carpenters,  blacksmiths,  and  machinists.  Both 
the  Irish  and  the  English  furnished  more  miners  in  the 
technical  sense  than  the  Americans  did.  About  eight 
hundred  men  in  all  were  needed  in  the  small  but  im- 
portant occupations,  such  as  masons,  melters,  pump 
men,  brakemen,  lamp  men,  and  a  dozen  others;  nearly 
two  thousand  were  miners  in  the  full  meaning  of  the 
term. 

The  organizations  by  which  the  Comstock  miners 
have  maintained  wages,  have  ruled  in  this  respect  under 
all  administrations,  and  still  continue  to  rule,  are  sim- 
ply "  Unions."  At  Virginia  City,  Gold  Hill,  and  Sil- 
ver City  their  word  long  ago  became  law.  On  one 
occasion  a  superintendent  who  had  attempted  to  cut 
wages  was  concealed  in  the  home  of  a  priest,  or  he 
would  have  been  torn  limb  from  limb  by  the  indignant 
miners.  No  Chinaman  was  allowed  in  the  mines  under 
any  pretext.  As  time  passed  these  remarkable  Unions, 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  251 

which  had  dictated  to  Stewart  and  his  allies  in  the 
days  of  the  earlier  bonanzas,  reached  out  to  greater 
victories.  When  Sharon  and  the  Bank  of  California 
syndicate  began  to  build  a  railroad  to  Virginia  City 
it  was  decided  to  use  Chinese  labour  in  grading. 

Sharon  controlled  nearly  everything,  from  the  news- 
papers to  the  Legislature;  but  no  sooner  were  his  Chi- 
nese graders  established  in  a  camp  near  the  Overman 
mine  than  a  committee  of  three  hundred  and  fifty-nine 
miners  from  the  Union  went  out,  four  abreast,  like 
a  military  company,  in  two  battalions,  and  descended 
on  the  Chinese.  The  sheriff  of  the  county  ordered 
them  to  disperse  and  return  home.  One  man  replied 
that  they  would  do  so  as  soon  as  they  were  through, 
and  advised  the  official  to  sit  down  and  watch  proceed- 
ings. He  halted  them  and  read  the  Riot  Act,  to  which 
they  listened  with  grave  attention  until  he  had  finished 
that  impressive  document.  Then  they  roared  sealike 
applause,  gave  three  cheers  for  the  "United  States 
of  America/'  and  marched  on  with  loud  Homeric 
laughter.  As  they  went  along  the  course  of  the  rail- 
road construction  the  Chinese  deserted  pick  and  shovel 
and  fled  into  the  gulches.  Not  a  shot  was  fired.  The 
"  Committee "  returned  to  report  progress,  and  for 
eight  days  not  a  Chinaman  dared  to  do  a  stroke  of  work, 
while  the  lordly  Sharon  was  supplicating  the  Unions 
to  permit  the  resumption  of  railroad  grading.  Finally 
he  signed  an  agreement  by  which  he  removed  the  Chi- 
nese from  the  districts  of  Virginia  City  and  Gold  Hill. 

The  wage  standard  that  the  Unions  insisted  upon 
was  not  less  than  four  dollars  a  day  for  eight  hours 
labour.  All  workers  in  the  mines,  skilled  and  un- 
skilled, were  put  on  the  same  arbitrary  level.  Their 
one  reply  to  every  argument  that  if  cheaper  labourers 
were  employed  in  handling  low-grade  ores,  more  men 


252  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

could  be  given  employment  at  the  higher  rates,  has 
been  the  curt  statement,  "  Pay  four  dollars  a  day  or 
shut  down  the  mines/' 

Four  dollars  a  day  was  not  unusual  in  the  mines  of 
the  Pacific  coast  at  the  time  of  the  discovery  of  the 
Comstock.  When  the  cost  of  obtaining  supplies  is  taken 
into  consideration,  four  dollars  left  the  labourer  less 
surplus  than  two  dollars  in  field  work  in  the  accessible 
valleys  of  California.  As  the  Comstock  lode  was  de- 
veloped, only  the  best  miners  were  employed,  and  others 
went  to  newer  districts,  thus  keeping  down  the  supply. 
The  bonanzas  were  discovered  at  such  intervals  as  to 
give  the  best  mines  a  large  margin  of  profit,  even  when 
paying  such  wages,  and  the  stockholders,  always  anx- 
ious for  immediate  returns,  were  never  willing  to  shut 
down  the  mines  long  enough  to  secure  a  new  body  of 
working  men,  even  if  they  could  thus  break  up  the 
Unions  and  greatly  reduce  the  running  expenses  of 
the  mines.  Indeed,  there  never  was  any  united  effort 
to  reduce  wages,  so  violent  and  immediate  was  the  re- 
volt  against  the  slightest  move  in  that  direction,  so 
strongly  were  the  Unions  supported  by  the  whole  com- 
munity.  Besides,  in  many  if  not  all  cases  the  tem- 
porary closing  of  a  mine  meant  the  flooding  of  it  with 
water,  and  perhaps  years  of  costly  efforts  to  pump  it 
dry  again.  The  Unions  held  an  impregnable  fortress. 

If  there  had  been  no  stock  market,  and  if  careful 
business  men  had  been  owners  of  the  mines  and  had 
held  their  shares  as  an  investment  first,  last,  and  al- 
ways, no  miners'  Union  or  mining  community  could 
have  prevented  readjustment  of  the  amount  and  the 
distribution  of  the  wage  fund.  The  Comstock  plan, 
which  paid  the  poorest  and  the  best  miners  by  the  same 
scale  of  compensation,  would  have  given  place  to  a 
sliding  scale  fixed  by  the  employers  according  to  their 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  253 

ideas  of  the  labour  market.  The  artificial  standards 
of  the  Union  were  only  made  possible  by  the  unique 
financial  history  of  the  great  lode;  by  the  millions  of 
dollars  in  unproductive  assessments  collected  from 
eager  men  and  women  of  every  rank  in  life  through- 
out the  Pacific-coast  States  and  Territories;  by  the 
splendid  succession  of  bonanzas  which  created  in  turn 
the  fictitious  paper  bonanzas  of  the  stock  markets; 
and,  lastly,  by  the  great  money  kings,  Stewart,  Jones, 
Sharon,  Ralston,  Hayward,  and  the  Bonanza  Four. 

Every  observer  of  the  Comstock  in  its  palmy  days 
noted  the  universally  high  standards  of  living.  Not 
only  the  necessaries,  but  the  luxuries  of  life  formed 
the  daily  fare  of  the  miners.  .California  and  the  ad- 
jacent valleys  sent  the  choicest  fruits,  berries,  vege- 
tables, milk,  fresh  butter,  and  stall-fed  beef.  Trout, 
venison,  bear,  squirrels,  quail,  and  grouse  from  the 
Sierras,  salmon  from  the  Sacramento,  ducks,  geese, 
snipe,  and  other  wild  fowl  from  the  sloughs  and  bays, 
and  oysters  from  the  Chesapeake,  were  everyday  affairs 
in  the  Virginia  City  markets.  In  1876  the  railroad 
carried  to  the  two  towns  in  round  numbers  400,000 
pounds  of  fish,  350,000  pounds  of  poultry,  120,000 
pounds  of  oysters,  1,020,000  pounds  of  eggs,  1,000,000 
pounds  of  vegetables,  and  over  2,700,000  pounds  of 
fresh  fruit.  Hams  of  the  best  grade  to  be  obtained 
were  a  favourite  article  of  food,  and  nearly  600,000 
pounds  were  used.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  continue 
the  list.  No  labourers  ever  lived  on  better  fare. 

The  clothing  worn  by  the  miners  at  home  and  in 
the  streets  was  substantial  and  often  elegant.  Their 
underwear,  white  shirts,  and  shoes  were  of  the  grade 
preferred  by  the  average  storekeeper  or  landowner. 
The  unmarried  miners  lived  in  large,  well-kept  lodging 
houses,  the  rooms  of  which  were  carpeted,  heated, 


254  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

and  comfortable.  Bathrooms  were  universal,  not  only 
in  the  lodging  houses  but  at  the  hoisting  buildings. 
Board  and  lodging  which  cost  forty  or  forty-five  dollars 
per  month  in  bonanza  times  has  been  reduced  by  1880 
to  thirty  dollars,  and  even  less. 

Pay  day  on  the  Comstock  comes  weekly  in  some 
classes  of  work,  and  the  habit  of  squaring  accounts  on 
Monday  has  grown  up  among  merchants,  so  that  Mon- 
day is  still  called  "  steamer  day,"  a  phrase  borrowed 
from  pioneer  San  Francisco.  The  regular  pay  day  of 
the  working  miners  is  usually  from  the  first  to  the 
third  of  every  month.  The  men,  as  they  come  up  out 
of  the  mine,  go  to  the  timekeeper's  office  and  get  their 
accounts.  Then  they  go  to  another  office,  where  the 
cashier  or  head  clerk  pays  them.  In  the  best  Comstock 
times  Consolidated  Virginia's  monthly  pay  roll  was 
ninety  thousand  dollars,  and  three  quarters  of  a  million 
dollars  was  paid  along  the  Comstock  every  month  to 
the  employees  of  the  mines.  Four  dollars  a  day  for 
workmen  counts  up  fast,  and,  besides,  the  engineers, 
machinists,  and  a  few  others  received  five,  six,  and  even 
seven  dollars  a  day.  The  railroad  men,  the  mill  men 
along  the  Carson  Eiver,  and  the  lumberers  in  the  moun- 
tains all  receive  their  wages  in  much  the  same  way  as 
the  miners  do,  and  the  cities  on  the  lode  receive  the 
most  of  it  back  again.  In  many  cases  every  man  in  a 
mine  leaves  a  dollar  or  two  with  the  cashier,  when  he 
draws  his  pay,  for  the  family  of  some  dead  comrade; 
in  this  way  as  much  as  two  thousand  dollars  is  some- 
times raised  in  five  or  six  months.  This  is  the  miners' 
life-insurance  system. 

Chosen  as  the  miners  are — the  very  pick  of  the 
mining  population  of  the  Pacific  slope — they  are  young 
and  vigorous,  but,  as  vital  statistics  show,  they  suffer 
from  pulmonary  troubles.  This  is  due  to  the  sudden 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  255 

change  from  the  tropic  lower  levels  of  the  mine  to  the 
snow-covered,  windy  ridge  of  the  town  in  winter. 
"  Many  a  man,"  says  Mr.  Lord,  "  reached  his  house 
half-choked  with  pneumonia,  and  spitting  blood." 
The  introduction  of  warm  dressing-  and  waiting-rooms 
at  the  hoisting  works  lessened  disease,  though  the  vitali- 
ty of  the  miners  continued  to  be  sapped  by  their  exces- 
sive use  of  stimulants.  Long  after  the  big  bonanza  days 
the  average  annual  consumption  of  beer  on  the  Corn- 
stock  was  fifteen  gallons  apiece  for  every  resident  of 
the  county,  and  that  of  spirituous  liquors  was  five  gal- 
lons. The  twenty  thousand  people  spent  annually 
about  nine  hundred  thousand  dollars  for  beer,  wine, 
and  ardent  drinks.  This  was  called  by  the  saloon  men 
"  a  dry  season,"  however,  for  they  had  seen  the  average 
annual  consumption  of  all  classes  of  liquors  nearly 
three  times  as  much. 

The  remarkable  efficiency  of  the  well-fed,  well- 
clothed,  and  contented  miners  of  the  Comstock  has 
been  noted  in  previous  chapters.  There  are  no  better 
miners  known  to  the  craft,  nor  can  any  nationality 
be  said  to  excel.  Working  groups  are  usually  made 
up  of  men  of  several  nations,  for  they  accomplish  more 
in  this  manner.  In  1877,  in  the  California  mine,  217,- 
432  tons  of  ore  were  extracted  and  milled.  This,  it 
has  been  estimated,  was  a  daily  average  of  1.13  ton 
for  each  man  employed.  The  report  of  the  company 
gave  the  expenses  of  that  year  as  follows:  Hoisting 
ore,  $186,461;  supplies,  $357,101;  salaries  and  wages, 
$788,012— giving  a  total  of  $1,331,574.  The  217,432 
tons  of  ore  brought  up  was  lifted  1,600  feet  and  cost 
at  the  surface  $6.12  per  ton.  Mining  authorities  say 
that  this  entire  record  is  without  parallel  for  cheapness 
and  efficiency  under  the  given  conditions. 

Never  were  the  self-reliance  and  sheer  fighting 


256  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

capacity  of  the  men  of  the  Comstock  better  shown 
than  during  and  just  after  the  great  fire  of  October, 
1875.  It  began  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning  in  a  low 
lodging  house  kept  by  a  woman  called  "  Crazy  Kate." 
Scores  of  cheap  frame  buildings  surrounded  it,  every- 
thing was  like  tinder,  and  a  fierce  gale  was  blowing. 
People  roused  from  sleep  had  barely  time  to  escape 
with  their  lives.  The  hoisting  works  lifted  men  out 
of  the  depths  as  fast  as  possible,  and  miners  and  fire- 
men fought  the  flames.  Vain  task!  The  wind  hurled 
fiery  missiles  across  the  city,  kindling  fresh  centres 
of  destruction,  while  the  main  torrent  rolled  on  like  a 
lava  river  from  Kilauea,  hemming  in  the  defeated 
toilers.  Great  brick  buildings  tumbled,  as  in  the  Bos- 
ton and  Chicago  fires.  The  populace,  yielding  to 
despair,  fled  to  the  mountains  and  there  looked  down 
from  barren  rocks  upon  the  destruction  of  Virginia 
City.  Out  of  the  ocean  of  fire  came  the  roar  of  ex- 
plosives as  whole  masses  of  buildings  were  blown  to 
pieces  by  gunpowder  and  dynamite  stored  within,  or 
were  blasted  out  of  the  way  by  the  heroic  men,  still 
fighting  as  they  retreated.  Pillars  of  flame  and  the 
mass  of  dark  smoke  were  seen  fifteen  miles  away.  The 
business  houses,  public  buildings,  hotels,  banks, 
churches,  freight  and  passenger  depots,  and  many  pri- 
vate residences  were  in  flames  when  the  whole  fighting 
force  was  centred  on  the  costly  mine  works.  The 
mountains  shook  with  blasts  of  dynamite,  clearing 
open  spaces  about  mills  and  hoisting  works,  but  the  fire 
leaped  over  in  a  hundred  places  at  once,  caught  lumber 
yards  and  shaft  houses,  and  swept  nearly  all  the  sur- 
face works  of  the  mines  out  of  existence  in  a  few 
moments.  Millions  of  feet  of  lumber,  thousands  of 
cords  of  wood,  trestles,  offices,  roofs,  machinery,  in- 
flammable supplies  of  every  description,  threw  out  such 


THE  MINING  COMMUNITY.  257 

heat  that  a  pile  of  railroad  car-wheels  in  the  open  air 
in  the  Ophir  yards  were  smelted  together.  The  fire 
began  to  creep  down  the  great  shafts,  and  here  the 
miners  and  firemen  struggled  in  the  midst  of  blazing 
ruins  until  the  mines  themselves  and  the  joint  shaft 
buildings  of  California  and  Consolidated  Virginia  were 
saved. 

About  two  thousand  buildings  were  destroyed  on 
the  lode,  and  ten  million  dollars  would  hardly  have 
replaced  the  loss.  Car  loads  of  cooked  provisions, 
blankets,  and  other  supplies  were  started  toward  the 
Comstock  while  the  fire  was  still  burning.  Money  was 
telegraphed.  Relief  committees  were  organized  in 
other  towns  and  cities.  Lumber  was  placed  on  the 
smoking  earth,  still  being  wet  by  firemen.  Electric 
lights  enabled  the  work  of  rebuilding  to  go  on  by  night 
as  well  as  by  day.  In  sixty  days  the  people  of  Vir- 
ginia City  were  again  settled  comfortably.  An  extract 
from  the  official  report  made  by  the  superintendent 
of  Ophir  will  serve  to  show  the  stuff  that  men  were 
made  of  in  old  Comstock  days:  "  On  the  day  after  the 
fire  men  were  sent  to  Carson  and  Dutch  Flat,  Cali- 
fornia, to  procure  and  ship  timbers;  machinery  was 
telegraphed  for.  The  new  double-reel  hoisting  en- 
gine just  completed  for  the  combination  shaft  of  the 
Chollar-Potosi,  Hale  and  Norcross,  and  Savage  was 
secured;  the  old  engine  foundations  were  torn  out 
and  new  ones  constructed;  work  was  prosecuted  with- 
out cessation;  supplies  hauled  a  considerable  distance 
on  account  of  the  destruction  of  the  railroad  tunnel 
and  bridges;  the  works  rebuilt  and  hoisting  through 
the  shaft  resumed  November  25th,  being  inside  of 
thirty  days  from  the  time  of  destruction."  The  new 
buildings  cost  nearly  $318,000.  Consolidated  Virginia 
and  California,  which  had  lost  $1,461,000  by  the  fire, 


258  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

replaced  everything  that  was  destroyed  within  fifty 
days,  and  yet  declared  without  delay  their  regular  divi- 
dends. Consolidated  Virginia  paid  out  over  two  mil- 
lion dollars  while  rebuilding  its  works,  for  it  was  in 
bonanza.  These  were  extraordinary  and  indeed  unpre- 
cedented feats  of  labour  and  capital.  The  city  of  mines 
had  come  out  gloriously  under  the  fire  test. 

Such  were  the  workmen,  such  the  communities,  that 
once  clustered  in  the  rocky  waste  on  the  mountains 
of  Nevada.  They  are  still  the  same,  though  since  the 
Big  Bonanza  was  worked  out  the  mines  have  paid 
their  owners  poorly,  and  the  towns  have  suffered  much 
more  than  in  any  former  period  of  borrasca.  Small 
stockholders  no  longer  carry  the  burden  of  assessments 
as  formerly,  but  a  few  large  owners  have  been  forced 
to  prop  up  the  fallen  market  and  sustain  by  their  own 
wealth  the  daring  and  still  alluring  speculation.  None 
except  themselves  can  say  how  many  more  millions 
of  dollars  these  men  will  or  can  spend  in  the  search. 
What  new  problems  are  to  be  solved  in  deeps  below 
deeps,  what  magnificent  metalliferous  deposits  may 
rest  undiscovered  in  the  great  fissure,  no  human 
prophecy  can  foretell. 


CHAPTEE  XXI. 

THE  COMSTOCK  AS  IT  IS. 

THUS  far,  the  story  has  been  a  straightforward 
narrative  of  events,  from  the  days  of  the  trappers  to 
the  exhaustion  of  the  Big  Bonanza.  Those  Titans 
whose  plots  and  counterplots  shook  half  a  continent 
are  dead,  or  have  forever  left  the  Comstock.  We  have 
fallen  upon  dark  and  narrow  times,  and  yet,  like  a  ship 
long  beating  up  some  iron  coast  against  unfriendly 
winds,  each  headland  we  round  may  prove  to  be  the 
last  cape  that  shuts  us  out  from  another  prosperous 
voyage.  The  spirit  of  the  true  mining  men  was  never 
so  clearly  present  as  it  has  been  through  the  lesser  epi- 
sodes of  these  sixteen  weary  years  of  the  Silence  of 
the  Comstock. 

"  She  has  another  word  to  say.  She  is  asleep,  but 
not  dead/'  Thus  spoke  incarnate  poetry  to  me  from 
the  lips  of  one  of  the  ancients  as  I  stood  on  a  gray 
waste  pile,  looking  out  over  the  barren  land.  The 
story  ends  with  a  question — "What  next?"  Is  it  to 
become  a  land  without  a  habitation,  a  mountain  of 
ruins  like  the  ancient  city  forts  of  those  unrecorded 
miners  of  Mashonaland  and  the  Golden  Chersonese? 

If  thus  it  was  now  ended,  how  very  far  from  a  new 
story  it  is  when  all  is  told.  Nothing  among  the  deeds 
of  gold-hungry  men  and  wandering  races  of  conquerors 
could  be  less  strange  than  this,  and  yet  it  covers  so 
large  a  space  as  to  become  almost  an  epic.  Over  and 
18  259 


260  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

over  again,  great  busy  camps,  becoming  strangely 
silent,  have  perished  as  frosted  leaves.  The  cities  the 
miner  has  built — who  shall  name  or  number  them? 
They  are  hidden  in  trackless  deserts,  luring  genera- 
tions of  prospectors  to  their  deaths;  they  lie  among 
Andes  and  Himalayas,  under  glaciers,  in  tangled  Cam- 
bodian forests,  or,  deeper  still,  where  lost  continents 
are  sunk  in  ocean's  dreamless  ooze.  Not  yet  has  that 
hour  of  doom  and  oblivion  arrived  for  the  proud  Corn- 
stock,  but  the  sceptre  has  already  passed  to  younger 
camps. 

Visit  with  me  the  Comstock,  then,  in  this  year  of 
grace  1896  and  let  us  briefly  note  the  condition  of  af- 
fairs. "We  climb  with  the  railroad  from  well-watered 
Carson's  sea-green  circle,  through  wild  gorges  and 
along  the  crest  of  ridges  that  look  down  upon  thou- 
sands of  prospect  holes.  Every  moment  the  view 
broadens  and  brightens.  We  climb  through  a  barren, 
lonely,  forsaken  land  of  strange,  shining  grays  and 
browns,  clear  cut  ir»  a  marvellously  invigorating  moun- 
tain atmosphere.  The  desert  slopes  endlessly  away 
from  the  eternal  mountains,  and  a  soft,  golden  glow, 
like  that  which  pervades  one  of  Gerome's  Egyptian 
paintings  lingers  in  the  far  east,  across  the  yellow  sands, 
the  silver  sage  brush.  High  peaks,  treeless  even  to 
their  deepest  canons,  cold,  severe,  and  yet  so  wonder- 
fully chiselled  and  rounded  that  the  heart  leaps  to  be- 
hold them,  are  ranged  about  the  amphitheatre  wherein 
the  cities  of  the  Comstock  were  founded  thirty-seven 
years  ago.  All  is  revealed  in  successive  landscapes, 
as  the  railroad  carries  one  upward  from  the  valley 
floor  of  the  Carson — itself  a  high  plateau — toward 
these  cities  in  the  clouds,  still  strong  and  patient,  still 
able  to  endure  until  the  end. 

A  little  space  farther  and  higher,  and  the  train 


THE  COMSTOCK  AS  IT  IS.  261 

swings  along  the  side  of  that  old-time  Slippery  Gulch, 
down  which  the  pioneers  slid  on  rainy  mornings,  as 
they  climbed  painfully,  with  more  or  less  reprehensible 
language,  to  their  new-found  placers  on  Gold  Hill. 
There,  in  the  hollow  and  canon-crossed  head  of  the 
gulch,  and  on  its  precipitous  sides,  so  steep  that  as  one 
explores  the  outlying  streets  his  hand  almost  touches 
the  rise  of  the  hill,  the  city  of  Gold  Hill  abides,  and 
all  the  world-famous  South  End  mines  of  the  Comstock 
honeycomb  the  vein  beneath  it. 

Although  Gold  Hill  played  a  minor  part  in  the 
great  trilogy  of  the  Comstock,  it  shows,  even  more  than 
Virginia  City,  that  most  striking  feature  of  the  true 
Western  mining  camp,  the  adoption  of  the  natural  sur- 
face of  the  earth,  no  matter  how  steep,  rocky,  or  diffi- 
cult of  access,  as  good  enough  to  build  upon.  A  little 
levelling  may  have  been  necessary  to  keep  streets  and 
buildings  from  rolling  to  the  bottom  of  the  gulches, 
but  as  soon  as  the  stern  requirements  of  the  law  of 
gravity  were  to  some  extent  satisfied  the  pioneers 
ceased  the  struggle.  Every  inch  of  ground  that  a  house 
can  be  made  to  cling  te-  is  occupied,  and  the  roof  of 
one  line  of  dwellings  is  often  on  a  level  with  the  base- 
ments of  the  next  higher  row.  So  strenuously  have 
men  seized  upon  and  utilized  every  point  of  vantage 
that  the  houses  seem  piled  on  top  of  one  another  in 
the  centre  of  the  town,  while  outside  scattered  dwell- 
ings climb  the  ridges  like  human  beings,  leaning  for- 
ward against  the  slope  and  resting  in  groups.  One 
sees  in  such  an  old  mining  camp  so  much  that  seems 
to  subvert  the  ordinary  laws  of  architectural  stability, 
so  many  leaning  towers  and  walls,  that  he  is  fain  to 
believe  that  the  whole  mass  of  the  town  is  in  reality 
bolted  and  iron-plated  together  and  fastened  to  the 
mountain  slopes.  In  the  deep  horseshoe-shaped 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

quarry  pit  a  mile  across  that  by  some  curious  mis- 
nomer was  called  Gold  Hill,  neighbour  can  talk  to  neigh- 
bour almost  as  in  a  theatre,  so  wonderfully  do  whole 
streets  and  blocks  of  buildings  overhang  those  beneath 
them. 

This  Gold  Hill,  this  irregular  and  immense  mass  of 
overcrowded  structures,  some  of  rough-hewn  black 
timbers,  some  costly  and  pretentious,  but  all  mingling 
with  and  actually  jostling  the  shanties;  these  sheds, 
barns,  and  rude  cheap  cottages;  these  bits  of  fence 
and  sidewalk;  these  crumbling  steps  leading  from 
street  to  street  and  from  house  to  house,  fitter  for  goats 
than  for  human  beings;  these  black  chimneys,  piles  of 
rusting  machinery,  high-roofed  mills,  and  acres  of 
white  and  brown  dump  heaps  encroaching  on  the  town 
or  sloping  away  into  gulches — all  give  one  a  vivid 
impression  of  what  life  was  in  the  days  when 
the  place  was  crowded  to  the  brim.  In  those  days 
it  was  not  a  city  in  fact,  nor  yet  a  town;  it  was  simply 
one  great  communal  dwelling  or  primitive  apartment 
house.  It  still  has  a  communal  aspect,  for  the  lessen- 
ing population  retires  year  by  year  from  the  outskirts, 
leaving  shanty  after  shanty  to  rot  there,  and  occupies 
the  better  buildings. 

The  railroad  carries  us  through  the  Divide  a  few 
hundred  yards,  and  the  last  and  greatest  panorama  of 
the  Comstock  chain  instantly  sweeps  into  view.  Sugar 
Loaf  and  the  Flowery  Eange  are  fully  revealed,  the 
North  End  mines  and  the  historic  metropolis  of  the 
silver  miners  lie  spread  out  on  an  irregular  sloping 
mound  broken  by  ravines  and  hollows,  rising  to  the 
mountains  of  granite  on  the  west,  and  sinking  into 
vast  canons  east.  It  is  larger  than  Gold  Hill,  and  slow- 
ly becomes  more  impressive,  though  not  so  immedi- 
ately picturesque.  It  lies  marvellously  open  to  all  the 


THE  COMSTOCK  AS  IT  IS.  263 

winds  that  blow,  and  they  seem  to  gather  here  from  the 
western  half  of  the  continent.  The  city  is  a  forest  of 
chimney  pots  of  all  shapes  and  sizes  and  every  con- 
ceivable manner  of  patent,  aimed  at  circumventing 
winds  of  every  sort,  even  perpendicular  ones.  Here 
ends,  almost  in  the  heart  of  the  town,  this  mountain 
railroad  flung  out  into  a  wilderness  of  rocks  for  the  sake 
of  the  silver  mines,  just  as  in  California  a  broad,  superb 
stage  road  is  flung  twenty-six  miles  out  into  the  Coast 
Range  to  carry  passengers  to  the  Lick  Observatory,  on 
the  top  of  Mount  Hamilton. 

What  is  the  visitor's  first  impression,  supposing  that 
he  knows  the  past  of  the  Comstock?  Not  disappoint- 
ment, but  a  poignant  regret,  almost  strong  enough  to 
be  called  a  personal  sorrow.  Wreck,  decay,  abandon- 
ment, make  the  dominant  note  of  the  scene.  Many  of 
the  great  mills  stand  idle  over  their  vast  gray  waste 
heaps,  rotting  slowly  down  to  death  and  chaos.  In- 
side, the  stamps  hang  rusting  in  long  rows,  "hung 
up,"  as  the  miners  say.  No  clang  and  clatter  is  heard 
— no  strong,  deep  roar  of  the  massive  machinery 
that  filled  the  canons  and  the  crowded  streets  in 
bonanza  times  with  constant  undercurrents  of  thrill- 
ing, pulsing  sound  night  and  day  alike  while  mil- 
lions of  dollars'  worth  of  bullion  poured  out  of  the 
smelters. 

The  catastrophe — for  it  is  nothing  less — does  not 
seem  to  attract  any  one's  serious  attention,  hardly  be- 
comes formulated  into  a  casual  phrase.  One  is  told 
elsewhere  that  "  times  are  dull  on  the  Comstock,"  that 
Virginia  City  "  is  not  what  it  used  to  be."  One  hears 
on  the  Comstock  itself  that  "  after  a  little  things  will 
pick  up  "  ;  that  there  is  plenty  of  good  rock  down  in 
the  mines;  that  the  trouble  is  with  "  the  ring  " — the 
speculators  who  are  trying  to  control  something  or 


264  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

other;  that  pretty  soon  the  lower  levels  will  be  pumped 
out,  and  work  resumed  in  that  most  torrid  mining  belt 
known  to  modern  science;  that  matters  are  nearly 
ready  for  a  great  simultaneous  revival  of  enthusiasm. 
Nor  is  this  merely  the  despairing  cry  of  unacknowl- 
edged defeat;  it  is  something  almost  too  sacred  to  be 
put  into  words.  It  is  neither  more  nor  less,  in  its  higher 
manifestations,  than  the  sublime  spirit  of  patriotism, 
defending  to  the  last  the  lonely  mountain  fortress  of 
the  miner  State  of  the  Comstock.  These  men  and 
women  who  built  Gold  Hill  and  Virginia  are  uncon- 
sciously loyal  to  something  that  never  took  visible  form 
in  the  chain  of  American  institutional  development. 
The  township,  county,  and  political  state  have  not  be- 
come as  living  realities  to  them  as  the  laws,  customs, 
and  social  order  of  the  Comstock.  The  cheerfulness 
and  even  buoyancy,  therefore,  with  which  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole  maintains  itself  is  something  that 
passes  human  understanding. 

I  stood  and  watched  a  man  at  the  ore  heap  in  a 
mill.  He  was  a  very  strong,  tall  man,  blond-bearded, 
with  flakes  of  gray  in  his  hair;  a  kindly,  sweet-tem- 
pered mountaineer,  and  he  knew  the  mill  and  mines 
as  a  child  knows  the  rooms  of  the  house  in  which  he 
lives.  "  Our  mine  is  doing  a  little  better/'  he  said  with 
a  smile  of  pleasure.  "  They  think  up  at  Ophir  that 
they'll  strike  it  rich  before  any  one  else,  but  maybe 
they're  mistaken  about  that." 

Everywhere  the  same  esprit  du  corps  exists;  it  goes 
far  to  explain  the  victories  of  the  Comstock.  Every- 
where, in  spite  of  the  real  decay  and  wasting  plant  of 
many  enterprises,  things  are  kept  in  some  degree  pre- 
pared for  the  expected  revival  of  mining  interests.  In 
outward  appearances,  the  community  has  fallen  upon 
hopelessly  hard  times;  but  the  potential  capacity  of 


THE  COMSTOCK  AS  IT  IS.  265 

mines  and  mills  is  still  enormous,  and  if  large  bodies 
of  pay  ore  were  uncovered  the  really  important  proper- 
ties would  almost  instantly  resume  work  at  full  speed. 
After  twenty  years  of  borrasca,  an  air  of  constant  readi- 
ness still  pervades  every  department.  The  boys  that 
sharpen  drills,  the  bosses  and  surveyors  and  superin- 
tendents, all  dwell  in  this  hopeful  atmosphere  and  knit 
themselves  closer  and  closer  to  the  thoughts  of  the 
unknown  mine  depths. 

Even  while  this  chapter  was  being  written  these 
unconquerable  Comstockers  made  a  discovery  that  may 
prove  a  new  bonanza.  In  previous  chapters  the  forma- 
tion of  the  chain  of  mines  has  been  described.  In  the 
chapter  on  Sutro  Tunnel  it  was  explained  that  many 
ledges  were  cut  by  that  great  adit,  and  that  some  of 
these  ledges  might  prove  valuable.  As  it  happens, 
there  is  a  wide  ledge  of  rock,  rich  in  a  few  places  on 
the  surface,  that  lies  east  of  and  parallel  to  the  Corn- 
stock,  the  centre  ridges  of  both  lodes  being  perhaps 
a  mile  apart,  and  the  lodes  possibly  uniting  somewhere 
in  the  depths.  The  long-neglected  ledge,  the  Bruns- 
wick, will  now  be  thoroughly  explored  from  end  to 
end — a  work  of  many  months.  Ore  now  taken  out  of  a 
three-foot  vein  in  the  extension  of  Chollar  and  in  Hale 
and  Norcross  territory  is  very  rich,  and  much  resembles 
Comstock  ore.  Being  drained  at  a  depth  of  1,600  feet 
by  the  Sutro  Tunnel,  water  can  be  handled  cheaply 
should  bonanzas  exist  in  the  Brunswick,  and  it  is  pos- 
sible that  in  a  few  years  a  fourth  line  of  deep-mine 
works  will  be  built  far  east,  beyond  the  long-neglected 
third  line  of  shafts. 

The  future  is  a  "sealed  seed  plot,"  and  no  one 
knows  what  has  been  sown  therein  for  these  great- 
hearted Comstock  miners.  But  how  dramatic  a  pos- 
sibility it  is,  that  while  all  the  world  is  being  stirred  by 


266  THE  STORY  OP  THE  MINE. 

the  extraordinary  mining  events  of  recent  months,  not 
only  in  America,  but  in  nearly  every  other  country 
under  the  sun,  the  ancient  strength  of  the  Comstock 
is  perhaps  about  to  return! 


CHAPTEE  XXII. 

THE  AMERICAN  MINER  OF  TO-DAY. 

THE  American  miner  of  to-day  is  toiling  steadily 
on,  in  his  countless  camps,  making  history  more  rapidly 
than  ever  before.  The  yield  of  our  mines  fluctuates 
to  some  extent,  but  every  decade  shows  enormous  gains. 
According  to  official  statistics,  the  total  value  of  the 
mineral  products  of  the  United  States  in  the  two  years 
1893  and  1894,  the  last  period  for  which  we  have  au- 
thoritative data,  was,  in  round  numbers,  $1,169,000,000. 
This  includes  the  metals,  iron  leading  in  value,  with 
silver,  gold,  copper,  lead,  and  zinc  following  in  the 
order  named;  it  also  includes  fuels,  structural  ma- 
terials, abrasive  materials,  minerals  used  for  chemical 
purposes,  mineral  pigments,  and  many  miscellaneous 
products  of  our  mines. 

The  vast  growth  of  all  departments  of  American 
mining  industry  can  be  plainly  illustrated  by  a  few 
statistics.  In  1845  the  entire  United  States  produced 
but  100  tons  of  copper;  in  1890  a  single  mine,  the 
Calumet  and  Hecla  of  Michigan,  produced  26,727 
tons;  in  1894  the  total  product  of  the  United  States 
was  158,120  tons.  The  world-famous  Calumet  and 
Hecla  has  produced  over  500,000  tons  of  copper  since 
its  discovery  and  has  paid  nearly  $45,000,000  in  divi- 
dends. In  1825  the  lead  product  of  the  United  States 
was  but  1,500  tons;  the  notable  Illinois  and  Missouri 
deposits  brought  this  up  to  30,000  tons  in  1845,  but 
the  annual  yield  sank  to  20,000  tons,  and  far  below, 


268  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

until  Eureka,  Leadville,  Coeur  d'Alene,  and  other 
great  groups  of  mines  carried  it  to  the  maximum  of 
1893— some  230,000  tons.  Similar  illustrations  might 
be  given  in  every  other  department  of  mining.  As 
far  as  civilization  is  concerned,  the  iron  industry  is 
the  most  suggestive  of  all.  According  to  Mr.  Birken- 
bine's  monograph  on  Production  of  Iron  Ores  (United 
States  Keports),  the  approximate  total  iron  product 
of  the  world  is  57,000,000  tons,  of  which  the  United 
States,  ranking  by  far  the  first,  produces  16,300,000 
tons. 

Such  impressive  sum  totals  may  serve  to  illustrate 
the  greatness  of  these  rapidly  developing  underground 
industries.  Better,  however,  are  glimpses  of  a  few  of 
the  newer  American  mine  groups  which  are  making 
fortunes  for  men,  especially  from  the  precious  metals. 
The  Cripple  Creek  district  is  situated  upon  some 
rounded  hills  from  seven  to  twelve  miles  southwest 
of  Pike's  Peak,  Colorado,  at  an  elevation  of  from  9,000 
to  10,800  feet.  Some  early  prospectors  organized 
Mount  Pisgah  district  here  in  1874,  but  failed  to 
handle  the  ores  at  a  profit.  An  excitement  occurred 
in  1884,  when  5,000  people  camped  here  on  "  salted  " 
claims.  Some  of  these  claims  afterward  proved  to  be 
valuable,  though  sold  on  false  pretenses.  Along  in  1890 
numbers  of  tenderf eet,  or  "  alfalfa  miners,"  as  the  pros- 
pectors called  them,  began  to  take  up  claims  in  the 
twice-abandoned  camps.  After  a  while,  by  a  little 
stream  in  the  aspen  thickets,  a  lame  burro,  a  dog  with 
a  broken  leg,  and  a  man  with  a  broken  arm  are  said  to 
have  given  the  chief  camp  its  name.  Notable  discov- 
eries were  soon  made,  changing  penniless  men  into 
millionaires,  and  by  1894  the  Cripple  Creek  excitement 
was  something  wonderful  to  see. 

Cripple  Creek  mining  towns  have  continued  to 


THE  AMERICAN  MINER  OF  TO-DAY.        269 

grow  since  then;  ten  or  twelve  camps,  with,  a  total 
population  of  some  25,000,  lie  within  an  area  of  six- 
teen square  miles.  Something  like  a  hundred  mines 
are  shipping  ore  to  the  cyanide-process  mills  at  Flor- 
ence, on  the  Arkansas.  The  mines  in  1892  yielded 
$600,000;  in  1893,  $2,100,000;  in  1894,  $3,000,000; 
and  in  1895,  nearly  $8,000,000.  This  one  district  has 
made  Colorado  the  leading  gold-producing  State  in 
the  Union,  the  total  output  of  gold  in  1895  being  $17,- 
340,495. 

Another  district  attracting  attention  is  the  Mercur 
of  Utah,  in  the  Oquirrh  Mountains,  where  a  Govern- 
ment mule,  kicking  a  piece  of  rock,  revealed  the  gleam 
of  gold  to  a  lucky  teamster  named  Allen.  Here,  and  in 
the  adjacent  Tintic  range,  are  rapidly  growing  camps, 
producing  half  the  precious  metals  of  Utah. 

But  perhaps  no  portion  of  the  great  mineral  belts  of 
America  is  being  more  rapidly  developed  at  present 
than  California,  long  to  some  extent  neglected,  and 
yet  possessing  many  very  famous  mines  and  enormous 
undeveloped  resources.  The  noted  Idaho  and  Eureka 
ore  body  yielded  over  $11,000,000  in  seventeen  years, 
and  paid  over  $5,000,000  in  dividends.  The  Hayward, 
the  Keystone,  and  the  Oneida  of  Amador;  the  Massa- 
chusetts and  the  Gold  Hill  of  Nevada;  the  Sierra 
Buttes;  the  Plumas  Eureka  and  the  Standard  Consoli- 
dated, are  equally  familiar  names  to  California  gold 
miners.  About  eighteen  thousand  miners  are  regularly 
employed  in  twenty-four  hundred  well-established 
mines,  in  different  parts  of  the  State.  The  Pacific  coast 
north  of  Mexico,  and  including  Nevada  and  Arizona, 
has  fully  a  thousand  stamp  mills,  carrying  about  fifteen 
thousand  stamps  and  costing,  with  other  machinery, 
fully  $20,000,000.  Half  of  this  investment  is  in  the 
State  of  California. 


270  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

The  American  prospector,  cheerful  and  energetic 
as  ever,  is  at  work  in  hundreds  and  thousands  of  once- 
ahandoned  camps,  whose  ledges  could  not  be  profit- 
ably worked  by  old  methods.  He  is  busy  revealing  new 
treasures  in  the  islands  of  Unga  and  Unalaska,  in  camps 
along  the  Yukon,  in  the  south-coast  Alaskan  gold 
fields,  and  in  British  Columbian  districts,  such  as  Cas- 
siar,  Caribou,  and  Eossland.  Prospectors  are  searching 
mile  by  mile  the  mountains  of  Washington,  Oregon, 
and  California,  all  the  way  down  to  the  Mexican  line. 
The  entire  length  of  the  great  Rocky  Mountain  min- 
eral belt  is  being  prospected  more  vigorously  than  ever 
before.  Only  the  other  day,  out  in  the  Mojave  desert, 
a  large  district  was  found,  where  placer  gold  and  rich 
quartz  veins  abound  and  new  camps  are  there  being 
established.  One  of  these  is  called  the  Randsburg. 
As  usual,  stories  of  the  rediscovery  of  the  long-lost 
"  Gunsight "  and  "  Pegleg  "  mines  come  from  various 
parts  of  the  desert.  Every  issue  of  the  mining  journals 
contains  hundreds  of  items  from  new  camps,  illustrat- 
ing the  toils  and  triumphs  of  the  prospector  as  he  tests 
surface  gravel  claims,  or  tunnels  for  ancient  river  chan- 
nels under  lava  beds,  as  in  Idaho,  or  finds  in  all  sorts 
of  unheard-of  places  the  gleam  of  minerals,  useful  or 
precious. 

Much  has  been  said  in  this  book  about  the  pros- 
pector, and  more  might  justly  be  added,  for  he  still  re- 
mains the  pioneer,  differing  in  essential  details  from 
the  miner,  the  speculator,  and  the  capitalist.  He 
lives  a  free,  careless,  outdoor  life,  and  he  has  blazed 
the  trail  for  others  all  the  way  from  Missouri  and  Texas 
to  Alaska  and  California.  Though  better  fitted  for  his 
work  than  he  was  fifty  years  ago,  and  better  supported 
by  those  who  make  fortunes  from  his  discoveries,  the 
American  prospector  of  to-day  has  not  essentially 


THE  AMERICAN  MINER  OF  TO-DAY.        271 

changed;  he  is  still  a  wide  traveller,  an  heroic  adven- 
turer, a  man  of  infinite  resource  and  homely,  well-tried 
virtues.  Sometimes,  like  Dick  Gird,  he  reaches  a  dis- 
trict "  with  a  pair  of  blankets  and  six  dollars  in  money," 
and  finds  a  million-dollar  mine;  sometimes,  like  Major 
Eeading,  he  "  loads  a  train  of  mules  "  with  gold  nug- 
gets from  new  placers,  but  far  more  often  than  other- 
wise the  wilderness,  which  takes  him  to  its  heart, 
sweetens  his  many  hardships  with  such  devotion  to 
his  chosen  work  that  all  his  life  he  searches  for  hidden 
treasure,  and  rarely  makes  more  than  his  grub  stake. 

The  whole  American  mining  field  broadens  year  by 
year,  not  only  on  the  frontier,  but  in  many  of  the  staid 
and  long-settled  communities.  Perhaps,  with  improved 
methods,  even  the  gold  deposits  of  the  Appalachians, 
from  Nova  Scotia  to  the  Carolinas  and  Georgia,  can  be 
profitably  worked  on  a  large  scale.  The  best  authorities 
declare  that  the  cost  of  roasting  and  chlorinating  ores 
in  a  hundred-ton  plant  is  now  less  than  three  dollars  per 
ton.  By  the  cyanide  process  it  is  even  less,  in  ores 
adapted  to  this  useful  method.  A  few  years  ago  these 
processes  cost  ten  dollars  and  even  twenty  dollars  per 
ton,  but  large  bodies  of  low-grade  ores,  long  necessarily 
neglected,  can  now  be  handled  with  profit. 

So  promising  are  recent  developments  that  it  would 
not  surprise  mining  authorities  if  the  annual  gold  yield 
of  the  United  States,  British  Columbia,  and  Alaska 
reached  the  hundred-million-dollar  mark  by  the  close 
of  the  century;  nor  does  it  seem  unlikely  that  the  total 
yield  of  different  countries  will  add  to  the  world's  gold 
stock  within  the  next  ten  years  more  than  $2,500,000,- 
000.  A  period  of  higher  property  values  and  of  larger 
business  prosperity  is  clearly  indicated  by  this  astonish- 
ing revival  of  mining  interests.  Evidently  the  story 
of  the  miner  and  his  mines  will  go  on  for  ages  to  come. 


272  THE  STORY  OF  THE  MINE. 

I  may  say,  in  closing,  that  there  has  never  been  a 
time  when  so  many  attractive  and  important  books 
upon  mining  were  being  published  by  specialists.  Be- 
sides the  United  States  Government  Annual  and  Census 
Eeports  and  the  invaluable  volumes  of  the  leading 
mining  and  engineering  periodicals  of  America  and 
Europe,  I  note  among  recent  publications  RothwelPs 
Mineral  Industry,  Statistical,  etc.,  a  masterpiece  of 
work;  Eissler's  Metallurgy  of  Gold,  largely  devoted  to 
new  processes;  Hatch  and  Chalmers's  Gold  Mines  of 
the  Rand;  and  Kemp's  Ore  Deposits  of  the  United 
States.  Really  monumental  works  upon  the  history, 
mechanics,  and  metallurgy  of  mining  are  each  year 
appearing  in  greater  numbers.  The  noble  industry 
of  which  I  have  given  only  a  glimpse  is  in  the  hands 
of  highly  trained  specialists,  and  everywhere,  from 
the  arctic  circle  to  the  auriferous  conglomerates  of 
South  Africa,  these  specialists  are  shaping  its  magnifi- 
cent future. 


or  t 
VNiVE 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

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This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

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Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

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"RBceiveD 


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